Top-35 rule hurts sponsors it was designed to protect (cont'd)

It all came to a head that October at Atlanta. The regular drivers showed up. So did the field fillers. So did youngsters like Kyle Busch, J.J. Yeley and Martin Truex Jr., trying to get a little more Cup experience before moving into the series full time. So did hopefuls like Kerry Earnhardt, Shane Hmiel and Johnny Sauter, driving essentially for test teams, but still trying to prove themselves against the best. The resulting collision was ugly. Riggs, Wimmer and Earnhardt found themselves on the outside, packing up transporters alongside Hermie Sadler and Andy Belmont. Raines, Bodine, and Kevin Lepage all made it to Sunday afternoon. NASCAR took notice, and a few months later took action.

Team Sponsors

Races Made / Missed (2007)

Driver	Sponsor	Races
D. Blaney	Caterpillar	29 / 3
D. Jarrett	UPS	21 / 11
D. Reutimann	Domino's/BK	24 / 8
S. Riggs	Valvoline	35 / 7
M. Waltrip	NAPA	13 / 19

But it isn't 2004 anymore. Shoestring teams may still attempt to make races, but they're rarely successful. The recovering economy has produced not a shortage of Nextel Cup primary car sponsors, but a glut of them. And the top-35 rule, designed to send home cars like Andy Hillenburg's Commercial Truck and Trailer Ford -- which finished 42nd in the 2004 spring race at Atlanta, making only 15 laps -- is now sending home cars like Michael Waltrip's NAPA Toyota or Sam Hornish Jr.'s Mobil 1 Dodge. Now NASCAR faces embarrassing qualifying sessions like the one that unfolded two weeks ago at Talladega, when the fully funded car of A.J. Allmendinger posted the ninth-fastest lap of the session yet still didn't make the race.

And ironically, the two cars that spawned this whole thing have been among the hardest hit. The No. 10 Valvoline car has failed to make seven races, a factor that surely contributed to Gillett Evernham's decision to part with Riggs. The No. 22 Caterpillar car has missed three starts, and struggling to stay in the top 35 has almost certainly compromised the performance of driver Dave Blaney, who's still managed to establish himself as the class of the Toyota fleet. How much better might that car be if everyone was on an equal playing field, and Blaney's crew didn't have to focus solely on qualifying 24 hours a day?

The top-35 rule was antiquated from almost the minute it was put into practice. Today, virtually every car that qualifies for a Nextel Cup race is a legitimate entry, with millions of dollars in sponsor and manufacturer support behind it. NASCAR was once the epitome of American free enterprise, a sport where anyone with enough cash and moxie could field a car and compete against Richard Childress and Rick Hendrick. Now, the top-35 rule -- and to a lesser degree, the Chase for the Nextel Cup -- have segregated the sport into distinct classes of haves and have-nots, each with clearly divergent ambitions once they get to the racetrack.

What might change that? A sponsor like Wells Fargo or Little Debbie or even UPS, getting fed up with not making races and walking away. After all, it was the sponsors who got NASCAR's attention three years ago. Maybe they need to do the same thing again.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.