Saturday's qualifying session at North Wilkesboro Speedway was already the fifth oval qualifying session to be canceled due to inclement weather during the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season.
As is always the case when rain washes out a qualifying session, there are questions from fans as to why the starting lineup looks the way it looks.
In the case of Sunday night's 450-lap Window World 450 at the four-turn, 0.625-mile (1.006-kilometer) North Wilkesboro, North Carolina oval, why is Team Penske's Ryan Blaney on pole?
NASCAR's qualifying rainout process, explained
NASCAR uses a two-variable formula to determine the qualifying orders for all races, and if qualifying is canceled, that same formula is used to set the starting lineup, albeit in reverse order.
The formula is based on two variables, but those two variables are weighted differently: the car's rank in the owner standings (30%) and the car's finish in the most recent race (70%).
Blaney's No. 12 team is third in the owner standings, so he gets a 0.9 in that category. Blaney won the series' most recent race at EchoPark Speedway (Atlanta Motor Speedway), so he gets a 0.7 in that category. His 1.6 mark is the lowest in the series, placing him on pole at North Wilkesboro.
Likewise, had qualifying actually happened, he would have been the 37th and final driver to make his qualifying run.
Points leader Denny Hamlin is only set to start seventh, even with a 0.3 in the owner standings category for the No. 11 team. His 12th place finish at Atlanta gave him an 8.4 in that category, boosting his overall score to 8.7, which was only the seventh-lowest of the week.
Second behind Blaney was Hamlin's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Ty Gibbs, who scored a 4.0 with his fourth place position in the owner standings (1.2) and his fourth place finish at Atlanta (2.8).
Why does NASCAR use the metric?
While there are those who still thing that the metric should simply be based on the owner standings, the current formula is indeed far less complicated than the one that came before it.
That formula, which was used from mid-2020 until the end of the 2024 season, involved four factors: the car's rank in the owner standings (35%), the driver's finish in the most recent race (25%), the car's finish in the most recent race (25%), and the rank of the driver's fastest lap in the most recent race (15%).
For drivers in the same cars each week, it effectively included three: the car's rank in the owner standings (35%), the driver's finish in the most recent race (50%), and the rank of the driver's fastest lap in the most recent race (15%).
But the new formula still manages to award a driver's full body of work while also placing an emphasis on the most recent race. In other words, a driver can't finish last one week and then expect to be on pole simply because he is still atop the point standings. Likewise, a driver who is 28th in points can't expect to be on pole just because he found his way to victory lane a few days prior.
Live coverage of Sunday night's Window World 450, the first Cup Series points race at North Wilkesboro since 1996, is set to be provided by TNT beginning at 7:00 p.m. ET. This race also marks the semifinal round of the second annual In-Season Challenge.
