We’re in the entertainment business. That was NASCAR’s answer this past winter when asked if any changes were going to be made to how they’ll qualify for all 36 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races this season.

See, with a new car that promotes “drafting” how would group qualifying work when being in the draft would be quicker than leading the group out front?

NASCAR said that drafting in qualifying would create chaos and mayhem and provide entertainment for their fans. Instead, it created anything but.

Despite multiple warning from the sanctioning body, teams didn’t listen. They’ve tweaked group qualifying multiple times this season already and even after lessening time in all three rounds to five minutes each, cars still embarrassingly sat on pit road until the final seconds.

Second, for the first time since 2013, NASCAR will revert back to single car qualifying on ALL ovals in all three series starting this weekend at Dover.

The rules change ends a run of five-plus years for the group qualifying format, which was introduced before the 2014 season. The group qualifying system will remain for the series’ three road-course events.

At oval tracks larger than 1.25 miles (Darlington Raceway and larger), teams will determine the starting lineup with a single timed qualifying lap. At tracks 1.25 miles and shorter (World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway and smaller), teams will start on the basis of the best of two timed single-car laps.

Competition officials made the alteration after a steep rise in qualifying gamesmanship through the first quarter of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season. With the series’ 2019 rules package placing an emphasis on the aerodynamic draft, teams often waited for the most advantageous position (receiving an aero pull) before making a qualifying attempt.

That qualifying cat-and-mouse game boiled over in March at Auto Club Speedway, when none of the top qualifiers wanted to be first out and all 12 failed to log a final-round speed. That incident and a chaotic qualifying session two weeks later at Texas Motor Speedway drew the ire of Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer, who said April 1 that officials were considering all options — including a return to single-car runs.

Wednesday, officials reaffirmed that the multi-car system had become untenable.

“It was (a) unified (decision) between broadcasters, teams and NASCAR,” Scott Miller, NASCAR senior VP of competition, said of returning to single-car runs.

“One of the other things to make a compelling program out of it is we’ve seen the use of the ghost car (on television). That’s going to be a big element in presenting a quality show. I think fans are going to be able to see which drivers drive in deep, which drivers roll the middle faster and get off the corners faster and really give the talent in the booth something to talk about.

“Another interesting aspect is every team has a good shot of getting covered during the qualifying session. We’re building in a few two-minute breaks to where TV can get some spots in and not break away from live action. That’s one of the goals in this, and I think with those designated spots and breaks we will be able to present almost a whole qualifying session live without going away.”

The qualifying order draw will be determined by the previous race’s starting lineup. For example, in the Monster Energy Series, the top 20 starters from the previous race will draw to take their qualifying lap in positions 21-40 (the second half of qualifying). The remainder of the cars will draw to qualify in positions 1-20.

Multi-car qualifying was used for road-course events in 2013, ahead of its full implementation at every track the following season. It was eliminated from superspeedway races at Daytona and Talladega in March 2015 as a safety measure after a series of crashes and questionable aero games made the system unfeasible at those high-speed circuits.

This to me, is a good move. While a majority of fans and even teams want group qualifying, what’s the point? It’s not entertaining to see everyone go out with one attempt in the final minute – literally. With five minutes available, four of them saw cars sit idle. Is that entertainment?

Ratings and attendance didn’t get a bump on group qualifying like they wanted anyways. Do you see it now? While single car qualifying isn’t ideal, it’s not going to make attendance or ratings any worse. We now will at least see cars in movement around a track and by only doing one round, it won’t take so long.

If you want to look for blame, look at the teams. Who said you only had to do one lap? There wasn’t tire fall off like we saw in the past. Why not run one lap with a teammate and flip flop the next? That way everyone got a lap in the draft. Instead, they kicked and screamed like babies and sat on pit road all saying someone needs to go but no one was man enough to actually….go.

Well, group qualifying is finally gone. When you only had 15 minutes of qualifying action now and only three of them saw cars on the track, that’s a problem. NASCAR found the best solution that will fairly set the field for races moving forward.