Earlier this week, NASCAR announced that on all three national levels, that they won’t practice or qualify for the rest of the 2020 season. While I get their reasoning behind that and frankly love the fact that practice has been outlawed, some of the current drivers would love to see both return in some capacity.

See, the lack of practice is hurting some teams. Kyle Busch is one of them. He’s winless this season and openly says that just a little bit of practice could get them steering in the right direction.

Same for his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate of Denny Hamlin. He notes that he gets why NASCAR doesn’t want to have practice in fear of a crash and a need of a backup car, which would in turn force teams to bring more personnel to the track and have more working back home in the shops, but he says that even if someone crashes in practice, they likely would have crashed in the race anyways — so just give them last place points.

Joey Logano brings up a good point for his struggles in performance since the COVID-19 return in the fact that he and his new crew chief Todd Gordon haven’t worked with each other prior to this season. While both have seen these tracks before, they haven’t seen them together. That’s why he started off with three wins, including a Duel, in the first five races together but none in the 14 races since the return. They had practice for those early races before the pandemic but haven’t had a chance to dial in what Logano needs out of the car to be a contender since.

These are some big named drivers that are guessing on setups each week.

I for one, think that it makes the field much more competitive this way. But, in terms of qualifying, I do see their side on that though. Those drivers are obviously fine with the lack of qualifying because they’re all in the top 12 of owners points and know that they will start in the top 6 Rows each race.

But, for those on the outside of the top 12, well the qualifying draw hurts them. The best they can start is 13th. With track position being so key at these races and factoring in stage points and them having a tougher time in scoring them now, it’s hurting their positioning in the standings.

Clint Bowyer isn’t a fan of it at all.

“Not only are you behind the eight ball, you’re behind the eight ball of cars that are capable of winning races,” Bowyer said of the lack of practice and qualifying now. “I mean, there’s a reason they’re up front. But it’s in a situation right now where you’re protecting those fastest cars on the racetrack. And if I’m a promoter and got my promoter hat on, I wouldn’t think that that would be necessarily the best case scenario to put on a great race for fans, you know, the more you shake those starts up, the better off.”

Bowyer, also says the draw is a bad way to determining starting lineups too.

“It has been a constant battle trying to dig ourselves out of a hole,” Bowyer said of the draws. “The way that the draw is for the top-12 it basically just protects those guys and makes it virtually impossible for anybody outside of that to capitalize on that first stage which puts them in a really good position points wise for the rest of the race.

“Furthermore, it puts you in a situation to have to try to gamble either at the tail end of that first stage or throughout that second stage to try to capitalize off some points whether it be that second stage or set yourself up for the end of the race. Anytime you go to gamble we all know that it can either win or lose big. Nine times out of 10 the house wins from what I can see. So, I am kind of frustrated in a sense that I feel like over the last month and a half we have had a lot better runs than our stats show. Again, just constantly digging yourself out of a hole because of the way we start these races has been a challenge. Very, very challenging as a matter of fact.”

Another driver that is frustrated with it is Erik Jones. He, like Bowyer, are both in contract years with their teams and with both being outside of the top 12 in the standings, they’re in an even bigger fight than they should be to become playoff eligible.

Both know that their futures rely on success with their respective organizations. When they see their teammates winning and running up front on a regular basis and them not, the microscope gets larger for them. They know that their cars are capable of top 10’s and better showings, but starting all of these races midpack hurts their cases of finding victory lane or even scoring enough points to solidly secure a wildcard berth.

“I think not qualifying has been a bummer because I know going to Kansas, we could start better than wherever we’re going to draw, which is going to be from 13th on back to 24th, or somewhere in there,” Jones said of not qualifying. “That part is frustrating and you wish you could go out and qualify because I know we can qualify up in the top-10 at a lot of these places. We could qualify better than where we’ve been starting.

“That’s tough and then not having practice is tough too because you have to hit it so perfect off the truck. There are so many weekends when you do and we have. There’s some races where I feel like we’ve been really close at the start of the races, but the days where you unload and it’s tough, I can point to a couple – maybe Martinsville is one that really pops up in my head where we unloaded and we just weren’t good. We couldn’t fix it. You can’t fix it over the course of the race and you can’t come in and change shocks or springs or nose weight. It’s hard when you have a limited number of adjustments. You can only really change wedge and panhard bar. That makes it a pretty small box to work in when you’re trying to change things under a race condition.

“That’s the tough part to me. There’s been days in practice where we unload and I feel like we don’t change anything and we’re pretty good. Some days, you’re thankful you have that practice and have two 50-minute sessions to work through, get your car better and at the end, you can really come through a lot stronger and plus it gives you the opportunity, having practice, you know what the track is going to do from practice to the race. You can really adjust your car to get it driving the way you need to for the race and that’s an advantage as well. It has been tougher.”

Jones, is currently on the outside looking in for the playoff standings. Bowyer, is barely in. For Jones though, he has five top six finishes while the guys he’s chasing (William Byron, Jimmie Johnson, Tyler Reddick) have combined to score four top six finishes all season. The car is better than it’s showing but being marred mid pack hurts them. They have to do strategy calls to get to the front to score points, but it hurts their race winning strategy too.

On top of that, factor in two fluke winners the last couple of weeks which in turn steal playoff spots from them and you get some tense situations for Bowyer and Jones.

“It’s frustrating when you see it because you know it’s worst case for our situation,” Jones said of Cole Custer and Austin Dillon’s wins. “Guys behind us in points, when they win, it just bumps us farther out and gives us a bigger deficit to make up. I was obviously really happy to see Cole (Custer) win, he’s a good buddy of mine and that was pretty cool. At the same time, it’s frustrating because he bumped us a little farther out. It’s tough. You try not to think about it too much, but when you get down to the situation, there’s eight races left to go in the regular season and we have some points to make up so you have to focus on it.

“It’s unfortunate because we were in a similar spot last year and we were able to go win Darlington there with a couple races left in the regular season, which was awesome, but it’s not fun having to be in that spot again. Hopefully, we can go out and continue to run.”

So, what does this do to their contract negotiations? It certainly doesn’t make it any easier. Bowyer, knows that Chase Briscoe is needing to move up to a Cup seat but when Kevin Harvick has won four times already this year, Cole Custer winning in Kentucky and Aric Almirola in the midst of a career best run (7 straight top 10’s), if Bowyer is left out of the playoffs, how can he realistically expect to be back for 2021?

“No, I haven’t really talked to them much about it,” Bowyer said on if he’s talked to Stewart-Haas Racing about a contract for next season. “I’ve been talking to partners and things like that and just trying to do everything that I can do to make sure that all the things are lined up for next year for them. I mean, that’s what I can do … we’ve got to,

“I’ve got to do a better job inside the race car, we got to do a better job of getting this 14 car back up front where it belongs. Doesn’t matter what you do outside the car if you’re not taken care of what is in the car, you shouldn’t be in any of them. Stewart-Haas is a wonderful organization. I want to be there. I want to retire there and and I love the opportunity and the people behind it. I believe all the pieces of the puzzle are there. The manufacturer in Ford, I mean, we’re sitting here representing Ford today and you couldn’t ask for a better manufacturer that’s invested in the sport the way they are. I just again, it’s a perfect fit for me.

“We started off really, really well. Started the front side of this pandemic well. We’ve run into some bumps in the road. And honestly, I hate to say it, I can almost pinpoint it on Talladega.  You put it on Talladega and flip that over. And the next two months have been drastically different because of that, literally, every time we start the race we’re behind. And you’re behind cars that are hard to catch up with. If those guys hang, you know, 8 to 10 points of stage points on you. It’s a bit virtually impossible. You’ve got to do something then to try to differentiate yourself and nine times out of 10 the way that these races are, things don’t work out. Then you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t on a strategy call.

“You know, three weeks in a row, we were running in a single digit and look to have an easy single digit finish. And two top fives out of that the caution comes out a couple laps after you pit and the rest is history. You end up 15th to 20th. I mean it’s that fast it can change. But again it was a gamble because we were trying to catch up so anyway.”

Jones, says he feels the pressure too. Denny Hamlin has won four times this year too. Martin Truex Jr. won in Martinsville and Kyle Busch is the defending series champion. With Christopher Bell needing to move over to JGR sometime soon, is he the odd man out?

“It’s a performance industry and we’ve been able to make the Playoffs the last two years,” Jones said. “I feel confident still that we’re going to make them this year. It’s frustrating when you’re in that spot and I don’t feel like all of what we’ve done to be in this spot is our own doing. We’ve had some bad races that things just didn’t go our way. Some of it has been our fault. I think it’s a combination of both.

“You feel the pressure and you want to get in the Playoffs and you want to perform for your team, for your sponsors and for everybody. But you hope that you can look over the course of your career and some of the things you’ve done over the last three years are going to add into that as well.

“I don’t think four or six races decide the fate of your career by any means and I’ve had a really good relationship with JGR for quite a few years now. I put probably the most pressure on myself. I wouldn’t say JGR ever comes to me and asks questions or questions why you’re in this spot. They see the same things we do and the same things we struggle each weekend and why we’re in this spot. People aren’t blind to that. The pressure I would say comes from me. I just want to run well, I want to content, I want to win races, I want to be in the Playoffs, I want to contend for championships. That’s the goal so that’s what we have to keep working towards.”