Power's P1 at Barber results in critical pun shortage

Versus coverage of qualifying was so horrible. First of all, if you’re going to tape-delay on the west coast and edit coverage down to one hour, I expect to see cars going around the track for the entire hour. Instead they give us the guys in the booth and driver interviews for about five minutes. Everyone emphasized that there is absolutely no passing on this track so qualifying is very important. Ok, talking about that will probably convince casual fans to skip this one, but whatever, this should make for a riveting qualifying session. Take me to the track!

Not so fast, says Versus, which insists we take a look at a map of the track, and then watch Simona De Silvestro take us around the track blindfolded. I actually enjoy these segments, but if you’re going to only give us a one hour session I can do without it. The upside here is that Simona came off as charming young driver so I’ll be rooting for her in qualifying … except I can’t because I’m immediately told she was eliminated in the first round of qualifying which Versus opted not to televise. Awesome. By the way, it’s time for another commercial break, and I still haven’t seen cars on the track “live.”

When Versus finally showed the cars on the track, there was no qualifying timer and no lap time graphic. And then, of course, it’s time to go away from the track to The Jack Arute Show. Not surprisingly, Jack is still obsessed with the two tire compounds. Every week he acts as though the rule was just instituted. We get it Jack. Two tire compounds, you have to use ’em both. The sticker reds are faster.

So after two more face time stops with the cute blonde and some other dude, we get back to actual qualifying and we’re almost at the halfway mark. There are three problems with the actual coverage of the qualifying:

1. There’s really no excuse for not keep a session timer somewhere on the screen at all times.
2. You cannot follow road course qualifying with a scrolling ticker. I assume Versus uses the scrolling ticker because that’s what Nascar does. They need to adopt an F1 style tracker that lists all the cars so you can see in real time when someone sets a fast lap. Versus intermittently put up a graphic listing the top six drivers vertically but it was too small and disappeared after 30 seconds or so.
3. Finally, if Versus isn’t going to show us a graphic that makes it possible to follow the qualifying, then at least have the announcers keep us updated. It seems like they talk about everything except for what’s actually happening during the session. In the closing minutes of round 2, Marco Andretti put in a flyer that sent him into the top 6. There was no mention of it. I hate to fallback on the F1 is better card, but seriously, could someone sit the Versus team down and have them watch Speed or the BBC’s coverage of a qualifying session.

One last thing, and this has nothing to do with Versus, it feels like this has become the IZOD Indy Car Tire Management Series. I assume they limit the number of tires available each week so that the smaller teams can afford it. I’m sorry guys, but if most teams don’t have enough money to run fresh sets of tires in qualifying and in the race, then it’s time to ditch the two compound format.