Stewart calls for change to boring NASCAR qualifying

Sprint Cup qualifying can be a tedious exercise at Talladega Superspeedway. Forty-something cars taking two laps each around the 2.66-mile track one at a time can take hours in an exercise that draws very few fans.

Tony Stewart wouldn't mind seeing qualifying shortened by having multiple cars on the track at the same time. Stewart was in Talladega on Tuesday to help promote the upcoming AMP Energy Juice 500 on Oct. 31. He said that if he's one of the cars that qualifies late in the session he usually has time to take a nap while other drivers qualify. Multiple cars on the track at once would speed things up, he said.""Two's a no-brainer," he said. "Three might be harder."NASCAR recently switched to such a qualifying format for the Camping World Truck Series with two trucks on the track at once. The Mountain Dew 250 truck race at Talladega on Oct. 30 will use that format. Stewart said it would be relatively easy to do the same thing for Cup qualifying. Stewart started the day at a state trooper checkpoint on Highway 231 in Pell City. Drivers were pulled over and if they had a valid license, registration and insurance and were wearing seat belts they got free tickets to the October race from Stewart, who is also a deputy sheriff in Fayette County. Stewart is one of this year's 12 drivers competing in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. But after the first two races he's in 10th place, 162 points behind leader Denny Hamlin. That’s partly because he rolled the dice while leading the first race at New Hampshire and ended up running out of gas less than two laps from the finish. He said Tuesday he doesn't even know where he is in the standings and focuses entirely on whatever race is next. Stewart, who is a team owner at Stewart-Haas Racing, also talked about the difficulties that talented young drivers have breaking into the sport and finding sponsorship."I blame the car owners for that," he said. "I blame every car owner who had development drivers."Car owners, he said, signed up young drivers for development programs and then couldn't provide them with full-time rides when they were ready to move up."What were you developing them for?" Stewart asked. "Now they're sitting out there without a ride." AL.com