Milka Duno's recent struggles have left the series with some difficult decisions.

Usually I update this blog with what has been happening with our race team, and trust me we have a lot going on right now with the MitiGator Ford Fusion. But I am going to go off track a little this evening. This evening I came across an article by Nick Bromberg and it is something that I found really refreshing. The article addresses Milka Duno’s recent performance in the series. Milka is a female racer who is best known for her run in with Danica Patrick a few years back. The article is pretty harsh on Milka, and understandably so. Milka struggles at most events and the article actually highlighted a race where she was 10 seconds off the pace. But I’m not here to judge Milka, I’ve been there plenty of times. Every driver will struggle from time to time, I’ve had races where it was all I could do to stay on the lead lap.

But what I found great was Randy Bernard (ceo of the series) comments about Milka, he stated that they were going to make a descision at years end on what was in the best interest in the series, in reference to Milka. And actually as I wrote this I discovered that they actually have put her on Probation. But I love this quote, “It’s very, very important for the credibility of the IndyCar Series that fans know they’re (the drivers) the best in the world.”

It reminded me of the days way before the top 35 in owner points were guaranteed a spot at each NASCAR event. A decision that in my opinion has hurt the quality of racing today in NASCAR. It doesn’t happen at every event but time to time you will have someone that qualified fast enough to place in the top 40 but yet misses the race because of owner points. I understand the reason behind the rule, NASCAR wants to reward the owners that are dedicated to the series with a guaraunteed spot at each event (no matter how they qualify).

But there was a time when you knew that the top 40 that qualified for the event were the fastest 40 drivers in stock car racing at that event. I personally think that NASCAR needs to go back to the fastest 40 cars in qualifying, qualifies for the event, and then have 3-4 provisionals left for if something happens to someone in qualifying that needs to rely on that provisional. Because honestly, this is suppose to be the top drivers in the world. Even if you are top 5 in points and your not fast enough to qualify in the top 40 then you don’t deserve to be there – Just my opinion. But you would still have the provisionals to fall back on if something did break in the engine, or if you blew a tire. So come on NASCAR lets make qualifying actually mean something, and best of luck Milka!