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Does this championship format really work? Or does it need a makeover? And how to reshape the playoffs?
Remember Carl Edwards' winning Homestead in 2008...while Jimmie Johnson (L) takes a break from his championship lap to congratulate him? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
By Mike Mulhern
mikemulhern.net
LOUDON, N.H.
So the chase begins, NASCAR's 10-week playoffs toward the stock car racing championship in Homestead, Fla., at the season finale.
However the question remains, is the chase really good for the sport?
Does it make for better action on the track, does it make for greater fan appeal?
There is a good argument to be made that over the past two or three years what the chase format has actually done is diminish the regular season, the tour's first 26 races – with the perhaps dubious goal of creating more championship excitement each fall against the NFL.
Pardon me if you've heard this one before, but maybe we could make it quite plain once again: NASCAR racing, at the heart of it all, isn't about the championship, it's about the racing out on the track.
People don't buy tickets to Sunday's 300 here to watch Round One of a 10-round title battle; they're here to watch Juan Pablo Montoya raise Cain, to watch Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin lay a fender to their rivals, to watch Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle raise a little hell out there, and to see some mischief.
Jimmie Johnson has become extremely good at this particular championship format (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
And people on their couches at home don't tune in ESPN for this thing with one hand on a calculator to figure out 'If the chase ended now.....'
It's about the action.
Racin' is rubbin.'
But does rubbin' win chase championships?
No.
Got to keep those fenders nice and clean....
Like Biffle says, a man can't win the title here this weekend, but he can darn sure lose the title here.
Winning championship....
A point system like that begs for review.
NASCAR racing should be about winning races and leading laps. Period.
And if a man wins enough races and leads enough laps, then at the end of the season, he ought to be the champ.
However under the current system, someone could win the championship without winning even one of the year's 36 races, without leading a single lap.
In fact, five of the 12 men in the chase are winless this year. In fact, those five – top stars too – haven't won on the tour in nearly two years.
So one good question at this point is just what should be the criteria for a NASCAR Sprint Cup champion?
Someone who's good at racking up top-fives and top-10s?
Or someone who goes out and leads laps and wins races....oh, and maybe blows up and crashes every now and then?
....after championship....
Under the current system, a driver who makes a mistake, or blows up, or gets crashed out, loses a ton of points.
Denny Hamlin at Atlanta two weeks ago, for example:
He started on the pole, led a bunch of laps early (nice duel with Tony Stewart), but then blew up, finished last, and earned just 39 points....while Stewart, with the win, earned 195 points.
Unfortunately under the current system, Hamlin simply can't make up that much ground very easily, if at all. If Hamlin were to win every race and lead the most laps in every race, and if Stewart finished dead last each time, it would take Hamlin seven weeks to make up that much ground.
And that's just those two men head-to-head. Throw in the other 10 chase players, and making any comeback from a day like that is all but impossible.
So if one of these 12 playoff drivers blows up or crashes and finishes last in Sunday's 300, and a chase rival wins, it's all over for the guy with bad luck. He might as well spend the next nine weeks on a beach.
That's clearly unfair.
A man can lose a lot on any given Sunday, but he cannot gain a lot.
That needs to change.
NASCAR needs a 'home run' system, where a man, down and out, can step to the plate and knock one out of the park and get back in the game.
...after championship....
Another important point to consider:
Now re-racking the points for some of the top guys at the end of the 'regular' season and give some teams a second chance over the final 10 events might not be a bad idea.
But here's the rub: This season there are probably 14 championship-caliber teams overall. Really, maybe only five or six, but 14 teams that could make things happen. And yet the cut is only at 12.
So if your team is one of the top-10 or so on the tour, all you really have to do during the first seven months of the season is try not to make mistakes.
Do you want to buy a ticket to race where drivers are just stroking like that?
And all that hoopla over the 12th man making the chase, in some dramatic fashion at the Richmond cut, well, that's pretty artificial.
Perhaps 12 men in the chase is just too many. Just about any top team can make the chase....
Why not put some real drama in July, August and September, and put the playoff cut at Richmond to just four or five men. Now that would make for some hot action.....
Two other points to consider: NASCAR has to make both leading laps and winning races more important.
This sport isn't about stroking or cruising to a sixth or eighth place finish. It's about dive-bombing the corners and raising hell out there on the track.
Another issue: and Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick can address this – the team that wins the regular season championship (those three the last three years) gets nothing in the chase for that effort.
In fact the chase format actually penalizes them: Gordon gave up 500 points in 2008 going into the playoffs, Stewart gave up some 300 points in 2009 going into the chase, and Harvick this year has just given up some 200 points.
Those guys worked hard during the regular season, and for what? The next day they're just another one of 12 men out on the field.
In fact Harvick, after dominating much of the regular season, isn't even the tour leader to begin this chase. He came out of Richmond last weekend 381 points ahead of Denny Hamlin, and yet today, for the opening chase race, Hamlin is 30 points ahead of Harvick. That's a loss of 411 points for Harvick and crew chief Gil Martin.
Fair?
Hardly.
....after championship.
NASCAR's Brian France and his men have been toying with some possible tweaks to the playoff format to change things up for 2011. And Jeff Burton says he might like to see the last race of the season as a type of NASCAR Super Bowl.....through a format TBD.
Perhaps a couple of 'elimination rounds' during the 10 races.
Now over the 60-plus years this sport has been played at this level, NASCAR has used a variety of point systems to determine a champion.
And for different reasons.
At one time, money won each Sunday and laps led were big criteria.
For the last 35 years, though, the championship has been based on consistency over the full season....a season that has become increasingly longer.
Sometimes this system (even before the chase) created some classic close finishes -- Alan Kulwicki's win over Bill Elliott and Davey Allison, Jeff Gordon over Dale Jarrett, Terry Labonte over Gordon, Gordon over Dale Earnhardt, Earnhardt over Mark Martin, Rusty Wallace over Earnhardt – and some runaways, like Matt Kenseth's 2003 charge.
But what we have here now is a scoring system that almost rewards mediocrity....or certainly rewards methodical patience more than pedal-to-the-metal 'outta my way.'
Doesn't all this celebrating become just a blur after four years? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
NASCAR racing should be about action, making things happen.
And drivers shouldn't be penalized so severely on a bad day that it completely ruins their season.
Why shouldn't the guy who wins the most races and leads the most laps be the NASCAR champion? Isn't that pretty easy to follow? Isn't that pretty basic?
The corollary of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' is.....
Well, remember when NASCAR racing was about winning races?
Maybe it's time to get back to basics.
Jimmie 'Four-time' Johnson has been doing a lot of championship celebrating the past four years (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
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Face it. Putting all the
Face it. Putting all the emphasis on who wins the championship has been a big mistake on many levels. Over the years, the teams have probably cared about the title more than the fans. As you said, it was about each race, not the end of the season. This format has sucked the life out of racing in a huge way. Personally, I find it impressive that a team can maintain consistant excellence over a 36 race season. I'm less impressed with someone who 'wins or wrecks' as a 'champion'. It appears that Brian France and many of the media are the only ones who find this not a playoff exciting. It certainly hasn't seemed to do much to get people to watch, either on TV or at the track. Tweaking thie chase isn't going to help, and elimination system makes it even worse.
Having a 'champion' is a big
Having a 'champion' is a big marketing tool, but i'm not sure what it actually does for the weekly action at the track...and i think what made the championship deal as important as it is today were the classic title battles of the 80s and early 90s, with Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, Bill Elliott, Rusty Wallace and Alan Kulwicki. There was real, honest drama there. Then somehow it seemed to morph into a marketing machine...
i didnt like the chase when it was first created, but then i grew to appreciate it. lately, though, i've seen where it does suck the life out of the regular season....check out juan pablo montoya last season, when he was so carefully trying to make the chase, and this season, where he was out of it so early that he could get back to racing. and if jimmie johnson and crew chief chad knaus do run through this chase again like gangbusters, and we see that they simply used much of the regular season as a big test for the chase, well, that would prove the case. i still think the idea of the guy who wins the most races and leads the most laps is probably the sport's real champion each year....or should be.
The honest drama never came
The honest drama never came because of points, it came because of winning races. The points race became a story first in 1976 when the point lead changed hands some seven times during the season before Cale's September win streak finished it off. 1979 and 1980 were the seasons that made it a big story because the point lead changed hands in the final race in 1979 and nearly did so again in 1980. It continued to be a story as Waltrip's victory binges in the second half of 1981 and '82 erased big Bobby Allison leads, then it became an outright controversy in 1984 when two drivers with fewer combined wins than Waltrip routed him in the points and he publically complained about it, and then Bill Elliott blew a huge point lead despite outwinning every other driver by at least eight races.
Rusty Wallace's 1988-9 title bids became big drama because he had to win a lot of races in 1988, then Dale Earnhardt blew it in 1989. Kulwicki's 1992 title became drama because it was a bunch of teams jumping into it by a bizarre convergence of collapse (of Earnhardt, Wallace, and during the '92 season Elliott) elevating what was a very mediocre season into a close points race, and then getting the biggest break in history when the point leader crashed out in the final race.
Basically the drama of the points race has happened over the years more by accident than because the points system is all that effective. The reality that the points system punishes success and rewards mediocrity finally corrupted the entirety of the running field by the turn of the century when no one treated winning races as more important than points.
Winning the most races in a season matters more than points but the points system refuses to face this fact. The sanctioning body needs to get over the myth of consistency and reward real performance - the most wins, the most laps led, and throw in top-tens for little more than tiebreakers.
The Chase format is much more
The Chase format is much more interesting than letting the current point system play out until the end without a Chase. Most of the points races prior to the Chase were over with 5 or more races to go. Perhaps not mathematically, but for all intensive purposes it was over by then. The only ones most people remember are the very few seasons that the points battle came down to the last race or last laps. The rest were BORING. Now, that's mainly a product of the outdated points system that easily allows a points leader to collect Top 15 finishes and maintain his healthy lead. Let's get a new point system, and then see how the Chase works out. With a premium on winning and no huge penalty for mechanical failure, then the racing will be more intense up front and during the Chase. Going after the trophy does not mean what it used to because who needs to race hard when you're already filthy rich from finishing 15th every week. Put some emphasis on winning with the points system, and if nothing else, the hard-chargers will be after the wins even more than they currently are.
The chase stinks. However, I
The chase stinks. However, I really enjoyed looking at the photo progression of Jimmie's championships. Well done, Mike.
Don't like the current format
Don't like the current format - here's my only fix short of abandoning it -top 10 drivers in points plus all winners. Yeah, even those rain-shortened and fuel mileage guys get in. But after 3 races, all but top 10 guys are dropped (not like they'd climb back anyway). Two more races, 5 remaining, only top 5 drivers remain "in the chase."
it's a 5-race, 5-man shoot out to the championship. That would add some excitement!
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