It’s August 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down, and NASCAR is feeling the impact too. With qualifying sessions disappearing from race weekends and teams having less time to prepare, the sport needs a new way to set its starting grids. Enter the performance-based metric, a system designed to keep races moving when qualifying is cancelled.
Six years later, that temporary solution is still shaping race-day lineups whenever bad weather intervenes. Now, insiders Jeff Burton and Tommy Baldwin Jr. are questioning whether drivers should pay for the previous week’s results when every race brings a fresh challenge.
“We’re here to race. Every weekend we show up to race, and you shouldn’t be hurt from the week before cuz it’s a whole different race, right? It’s a whole different place. You know, some people aren’t very good at Bristol compared to Charlotte. I mean, so I mean, we’re at the point now with these cars and the changes that we’re allowed to make on pit road and do the things that we need to do. It still should go by practice speeds of that race,” Tommy Baldwin Jr. said on the Door Bumper Clear podcast.
His criticism comes as rain continues to disrupt qualifying sessions, forcing officials to use a performance-based metric to determine starting positions. The system rewards recent results and season-long performance, but Baldwin argues that teams should be judged on their preparation for the track they are about to race on. Jeff Burton shares some of those concerns, although he believes owner points would be a better fallback when qualifying is cancelled.
The debate resurfaced at Charlotte Motor Speedway ahead of the Bank of America 400. Rain washed out both practice and qualifying, leaving NASCAR with no fresh lap times to use when setting the grid. Officials therefore applied the metric, which assigns 70% of its weight to a driver’s finish in the previous race and 30% to the team’s current position in owner points.
Kyle Larson earned the pole, with Chase Briscoe alongside him. Tyler Reddick, Ryan Blaney and Austin Cindric completed the top five. However, few of the championship contenders were at a disadvantage as Denny Hamlin started 12th, Christopher Bell lined up 17th, and Preece started all the way down in 24th.
The Charlotte lineup was another example of how a driver’s previous result can shape the next race before the cars even hit the track. The metric had been used nine times during the 2026 season, including four of the first six Chase races. When qualifying is held, the formula determines the order in which drivers make their qualifying attempts.
When weather cancels the session, that same formula determines the actual starting grid. This distinction matters because a poor result the previous weekend can push a driver deep into the field, even if the team arrives at the next venue with a strong car and a competitive setup.
The consequences were particularly visible at Darlington Raceway, where lightning cancelled practice and qualifying ahead of the Chase opener. The previous race had been the chaotic regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway, so results from a superspeedway race heavily influenced the starting order for the demanding Darlington track.
Kyle Larson started 25th, Ryan Blaney 24th, William Byron 20th, Ty Gibbs 28th, Carson Hocevar 34th and Chris Buescher 35th. In total, six of the 16 Chase drivers started 20th or worse. Hocevar had crashed at Daytona, while Blaney was caught in a last-lap incident that left him 33rd in the race results. Their troubles followed them into the opening round of the Chase, despite the very different demands of Darlington.
That is precisely the problem Baldwin wants NASCAR to address. He argues that each race should give teams a fresh opportunity to show what they can do. A car that struggles at Bristol might be much stronger at Charlotte, and its starting position should reflect the current weekend’s preparation rather than a result from a different track. Baldwin believes practice speeds could provide a more relevant measure when qualifying is cancelled.
Burton, however, sees a reason the metric was introduced in the first place. Before the system became a regular part of NASCAR’s qualifying process, rain-cancelled sessions could leave the starting grid based on owner points. That approach often put the highest-ranked teams at the front and left lower-ranked teams struggling to escape the back of the field.
NASCAR, on their part, is preparing to address the growing concerns surrounding the system. The sanctioning body has indicated that it will review the qualifying metric and is likely to modify the rules during the upcoming winter offseason. That gives officials an opportunity to reassess how starting grids are determined when weather disrupts a race weekend.
With repeated rainouts bringing the debate back into focus, the offseason review could help NASCAR find a solution that better reflects each team’s performance at the track hosting the race.
