Kevin Harvick joked that his extremely well thought-out strategy for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series' first-ever knock-out edition of qualifying at Talladega Superspeedway this weekend was simply, "just going home and starting in the back.'' You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't expect Saturday's new qualifying format -- group qualifying's restrictor plate debut -- to be as compelling a display as Sunday's high-speed, high-stakes race around NASCAR's biggest track. To his point, Boris Said (who won a pole at the other restrictor-plate track, Daytona, in 2006) once joked that a monkey could win single-car qualifying at Talladega because essentially all the driver did was push the pedal to the floor, hold it and turn left around the high banks. It won't be "monkey" business as usual this week because NASCAR's knock-out time trials force strategy and even a bit of showmanship as teams decide when and how they can make the cleanest, fastest run with 46 other cars also attempting to do the same thing at the same time. More...