Cory wrote:Consider the case of Dale.
Dale's car crashed during a practice run and is now "totaled". The crash was not Dale's fault. In fact, Dale took every precaution to keep the crash from happening.
Dale and his team had prepared another car, but now they're being told they can't race it next week at the big race.
Of course this last thing would never happen, because Dale is Dale Earnhardt and this is NASCAR we're talking about.
All the NASCAR teams bring two or more cars to every race, and those cars are selected from a larger stable of cars, often numbering in the dozens. Ultimately, they select one car which is the car they enter into the race. The history of that particular car is not important.
It is the history of that particular team and driver which is important. The team and driver qualify for the race, not the car.
Why would you hold a Cub Scout to a more stringent standard?
If a car that has qualified is replaced, the driver starts at the back of the field with the replacement car, as close to a disqualification as the rules allow. But that's in real racing with multimillion dollar budgets where sponsors aren't interested in seeing their investments in the paddock. The also have short-track cars, road-track cars, superspeedway cars, etc.
Here we are talking about a choice to build a new car, having won the right to represent your pack in a higher level race. Not a destroyed car, not a totaled car, not a damaged car, just a new car.
What does the qualifying race represent if not the gathering of the qualified cars? Why have a race where the vehicle you use to separate qualifiers will have no bearing on the next level of racing? Just pick names from a hat and then build the "real" car.
What penalty am I advocating imposing? How am I hurting the scout. All I advocate is bring the pack winning cars to the event that winning the pack qualified them for.
