NASCAR: Budweiser Shootout

This has been up at NASCAR.com for a bit now, but meh, it's a starting place...so the Shootout has changed. Again.

The (multiple) recent format changes aren't all that surprising... Anheuser-Busch gave up sponsorship of the pole awards (which went to Coors Light), and thus they didn't want to base it on the previous season's poles anymore. They've always sponsored the event since its inception in 1979 as the Busch Clash, so what AB wants, they're probably going to get. Marketing in NASCAR sorta works that way.

Okay. Fine. We can accept that.

So it became the top 6 finishers in owner points, for the season before for each manufacturer, plus a 'wild card' or former champion as the seventh driver. Apparently, this didn't work to their liking, either. One potential reason is that basing it on owner's points made it susceptible to Silly Season, but since I wasn't in the room at the time of the argument, I really can't say.

Now, we get this (taken from the official press release found here):

• The 12 drivers that qualified for the 2009 Chase
• Past Cup Series champions
• Past Budweiser Shootout champions
• Past Daytona points race winners
• The reigning rookie of the year

This leads to the inevitable cries from fans that it was done entirely for Dale Jr's sake... which is possible... I guess.

More likely, it was done to get away from the Manufacturer ties, focus on the drivers more directly, AND focus more on Daytona (which is more or less the argument Pemberton gave). And if nothing else, it guarantees that qualifying for the Shootout is now just as convoluted as qualifying for the 500 itself.

Regardless, it's changed. Again. And once again, there is no real way of wrapping your brain around anything that happens at Daytona until the Checkered Flag falls and HOW they got there becomes less than relevant.

And if it doesn't work to their liking this time....? They'll just change it again next year.