{"id":8124,"date":"2020-04-29T10:21:28","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T14:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonmotorsport.com\/?p=8124"},"modified":"2022-07-22T12:11:03","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T16:11:03","slug":"white-zone-waivers-in-nascar-are-a-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2020\/04\/29\/white-zone-waivers-in-nascar-are-a-joke\/","title":{"rendered":"The White Zone: Waivers in NASCAR are a joke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At this point, waivers in NASCAR are on par with Oprah Winfrey giving everyone in her audience a car.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Oprah you get a car\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pviYWzu0dzk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>If you missed it, NASCAR announced Tuesday that <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonmotorsport.com\/2020\/04\/28\/ryan-newman-matt-kenseth-granted-playoff-waiver-by-nascar\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Ryan Newman<\/strong> and <strong>Matt Kenseth<\/strong> were granted waivers<\/a> to be eligible to qualify for the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve got no problem with it in Newman&#8217;s case, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonmotorsport.com\/2020\/02\/17\/ryan-newman-hurt-in-daytona-500-crash\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">as he was injured in a NASCAR-sanctioned event<\/a>. I do, however, have one in Kenseth&#8217;s case.<\/p>\n<p>Kenseth didn&#8217;t run the first four races of the season. He had no intention of running any of the events. By NASCAR&#8217;s own rules, he&#8217;s done nothing to warrant waiver eligibility.<\/p>\n<p>A more cynical person could say it&#8217;s a nakedly transparent way for NASCAR to get a big name into its playoff format. Although, a more skeptical person might say NASCAR didn&#8217;t want to punish Chip Ganassi Racing, who lost sponsors over their former driver, <strong>Kyle Larson<\/strong>, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonmotorsport.com\/2020\/04\/14\/kyle-larson-fired-from-chip-ganassi-racing-after-saying-racial-slur-in-iracing-stream\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">dropping an N-bomb<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Full disclosure: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TuckerWhite94\/status\/1255238825317711873\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">I&#8217;m in the former camp<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, neither should factor into granting a waiver to a driver.<\/p>\n<p>But this is NASCAR we&#8217;re talking about. It&#8217;s going to do what it wants, even if it&#8217;s to the detriment of what little integrity its joke-of-a playoff format still has.<\/p>\n<p>Why does NASCAR bother to have a rule requiring drivers to attempt to qualify for every race to be playoff eligible if it&#8217;s just going to give a waiver to anyone for any reason?<\/p>\n<p>At this point, what does a driver have to do to not get one? Hell, I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if NASCAR grants a waiver to a driver who doesn&#8217;t feel like racing one week.<\/p>\n<p>Why shouldn&#8217;t it? If NASCAR&#8217;s not going to enforce its rules in Kenseth&#8217;s case, it can&#8217;t credibly enforce the rule on attempting to qualify for every race in the situation it was intended for.<\/p>\n<p>If NASCAR wants to just give a waiver to whomever, fine. But then it shouldn&#8217;t require drivers to attempt to qualify for every race.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s my view, for what it&#8217;s worth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At this point, waivers in NASCAR are on par with Oprah Winfrey giving everyone in her audience a car. If you missed it, NASCAR announced Tuesday that Ryan Newman and Matt Kenseth were granted waivers to be eligible to qualify for the playoffs. I&#8217;ve got no problem with it in Newman&#8217;s case, as he was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":8130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1664],"tags":[197,14,1269,371,139,1325],"class_list":["post-8124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","category-nascar-cup-series","tag-matt-kenseth","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-2020","tag-nascar-cup-series","tag-ryan-newman","tag-the-white-zone"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}