The Whelen Modified Tour had its’ first encounter with the NASCAR Beneficiary rule at the Thompson Icebreaker this weekend past. I know I am skating on thin ice here as this rule has been notoriously unpopular and those who disagree with its’ use tend to oppose it so vehemently. A national broadcast celebrity tabbed this the ‘Lucky Dog’ rule and the name has stuck so well that even some of the NASCAR officials refer to the Beneficiary rule as such.

I have never been a fan of allowing lapped cars to pull up on restarts to attempt to get their laps back. These cars often have a difficult time keeping up to minimum speed and the fact that these roadblocks are such a detriment to the racing among the leaders, that practice has been one of my pet peeves for years. I can hear the Modified faithful now, ‘Walt! We haven’t allowed lapped cars to pull up on restarts on the Modified Tour for a couple of years!’ This is not all about the Tour; it is about racing all across the NASCAR world.

I believe that the Beneficiary rule will work well at all levels of NASCAR racing. That is provided that the practice of allowing lapped cars to pull up on restarts is eliminated. If that were done and all restarts were double file, order of running, that includes the lapped cars where they may be, like we do on the Tour, it would make for much more exciting racing.

There was tremendous excitement at the Budweiser Shootout because all of the restarts were side-by-side. The Modified Tour provides double file restarts at most events until a selected lap. This practice brings a second groove in more quickly and greatly reduces how fast many cars become lapped.

Think about this, when the leader of a Cup, Busch or Truck race takes off on a restart, they generally can quickly pull away from their nearest competitors. Those behind the leader often have to battle to get around lapped cars that have pulled up on the inside. Meanwhile, as the leader tears around the track at top speed in clean air, those at the tail end of the lead lap, which restart single file, may be nearly a half a lap in arrears facing a bottleneck a straightaway ahead where the lapped cars have all congregated. No wonder we can see fairly competitive cars fall into the clutches of the leader so quickly at those levels.

The institution of the Beneficiary rule for the Modified Tour, as I understand it, was an experiment to see how well it might work at this level. This was something that I believe was sprung on our officials at the last minute. Some of the extra caution laps that were burned getting the ‘Lucky Dog’ past the leader were due to the fact that the officials weren’t familiar with it and it wasn’t part of their script of actions for a caution situation. As we saw at the Cup and Busch levels, the extra laps needed to enforce this rule dropped significantly once the officials and the competitors became more comfortable with it.

I kind of like the Beneficiary rule. I do feel however that it is even more important that the NASCAR divisions on the National level adopt our practice of double file restarts than it is for us to compete under the Beneficiary rule. I feel the combination of those two rules would create more excitement for the fans. Double file restarts bring in that second groove quickly and leads to more side-by-side racing, race leaders would have decidedly less of an advantage on restarts and would be less likely to dash away from the rest of the field. The bottom line is that I feel that these changes could improve competition at every level in the NASCAR world.