Gone is the agonizing three-hour wait as one car after another makes individual laps around NASCAR's biggest race track. Now it will be an absolute storm, with drivers almost certainly working the draft in an effort to secure the top starting position (and its accompanying first pit stall selection) in the frantic final session that caps the new group qualifying format announced Wednesday across all three of NASCAR's national series. No place stands to benefit from the change more than big, bad Talladega, where the issuing of one news release has changed the track's qualifying process from a grind into 50 minutes of must-see-TV. Although NASCAR refers to the new process simply as a group qualifying format, other circuits like Formula 1 that have successfully utilized similar concepts call it "knockout" qualifying -- and in many places, the new procedure could prove to be just that. More...