There's nothing saying that it WON'T come back at some point during 2012, it just won't be back right now.
It wasn't just the grid size diminishing (which had been greater than in years past) - there was also a general sense of poor driving - as I called it, "Making contact for contact's sake" - it's not a banger series, it's a racing series where incidental contact is fair play, but not just contact to have contact.