What I heard was that the top ten from each class would start first, and the winner of the last race determined which of the top ten classes would start in front of the other top ten.
When Casey made that statement at Parker, I interpreted it to mean the top 10 of each class would be in front of their respective class, with the first finisher to determine which class started first. This is what appears to have taken place.
If the top 10 NA cars were in front of all the turbo cars it would make it more challenging for the rest of the NA cars to compete with them due to the entire field of turbo cars in their way. Last season Lambert utterly dominated the NA class, and to his credit typically destroyed all the turbo cars. But due to the combined nature of the top 10 the vast majority of NA cars were basically guaranteed a draw position of 40-80 competing against position 1 or 2. Obviously not impossible on corrected time, but an up hill battle for sure.
Haha..... something needs to change!!! .
The whole top 10 thing is a joke. The top 5 at Parker were reasonably close to Mitchy (within 20 minutes). But 6th place was 40 minutes off the lead pace and 10th place was an hour off pace. That should hardly qualifie someone to start in the top 10. But for now it looks like it will make it a fun and crazy race for sure.
I am hesitant about qualifying because it adds another day to each race, which simply increases the cost to participate. However I think it could help solve the downsides of a large draw (Like #47/52, wow, good thing we just rebuilt our front bumper...
...It'll be a fun and crazy race indeed). Look at the unlimited classes- both TT and Class 1 qualify together, so when Harley smokes almost every TT, he starts up front because he earned it. This idea would put to rest the turbo vs NA discussion, as well as getting closer to having cars ordered not by chance, but by capability.