Time to correct the NASCAR Chase's greatest flaw: unfairness
It is time to stop playing the "what if" game. Entering its sixth edition, NASCAR's year-end Chase championship format has become an entrenched part of the sport. It's likely responsible for increased television ratings the past two weekends, exactly what it was designed to do.
No question, there are some purists out there who despise the thing, who wish it would go the way of bias-ply tires and the hemi engine. They're spitting into the wind. Seasons like this one, overloaded with drama and intrigue over who will get in and who will fall out -- in lieu of what would otherwise be a runaway championship race -- only serve to justify its existence.
So enough of pining for something that will never happen. Enough of Monday-morning quarterbacking the day after the Homestead race, when plenty of fans shake their heads and point to the traditional points format and say, well, we all know so-and-so should really be the champion.
Enough of acting like Jimmie Johnson has somehow lucked his way into three consecutive titles because his rise has coincided with the Chase era, and he plays by the rules he's given better than anyone else. You don't hear baseball fans harping on the fact that the Boston Red Sox wouldn't have won their skid-snapping World Series in 2004 without the implementation of the wild card. Yet racing fans do the exact same thing every day.
So stop it. Five years ago, maybe, when the Chase was new and no one really knew how long it might be around, direct comparisons between the two playoff formats held a little merit. Not anymore. Now, such arguments seem as bitter and pointless as those waged by defeated party loyalists in the aftermath of a presidential election.
Does the Chase have its flaws? Absolutely. But there are no indications that NASCAR is going to change its championship format anytime soon. The Chase appears here to stay. Like Kyle Busch winning races or a Sprint Cup event in Southern California, it's something that fans are eventually going to have to come to grips.
Of course, embittered race fans are only part of the equation. The system could help itself. Every year in which a driver builds a large regular-season points advantage only to come up short in the final 10 races, the Chase loses some credibility in the eyes of NASCAR's most ardent fans. If hardcore racing supporters are really going to embrace this format, if they're truly going to accept the year-end champion as legitimate, then a driver who dominates over the first 26 races is going to have to finish the job.
The fact that it's happened only once in the now five-year history of the Chase stands as the format's greatest detriment, the very reason why so many traditionalists see it more as a made-for-television gimmick than a true method of determining NASCAR's season-long champion. The only driver to lead after 26 races and remain in front after the final 10 is Tony Stewart, who did it in 2005. But he's the exception, not the rule.
The rule is someone like Jeff Gordon in '07 or Kyle Busch last year, both of who saw big leads painfully evaporate during the last 10 races and watched someone else hoist the trophy in Homestead. That's the kind of thing that drives race fans, conditioned by history to accept a driver who has performed at a certain level throughout an entire season as champion, into fits of frustration. That's why a certain segment of the fan base still struggles to accept the Chase.
With good reason. In '04, eventual champion Kurt Busch finished the regular season in seventh place, 293 points behind leader Gordon. But he started the Chase only 30 points back and won the title by eight over Johnson. In '06, Johnson finished the regular season 57 points behind Matt Kenseth, but finished the Chase 56 ahead. In '07, Gordon enjoyed one of his greatest statistical campaigns ever, with six wins, seven poles and 30 top-10s. He ended the regular season with a 312-point advantage over the field. Johnson was in fourth place, 410 points back. And yet when the Chase started, Johnson was ahead by 20 points because of win-based seeding. When it ended, Johnson was ahead by 77.
Then there was Kyle Busch, 207 points up on everyone after Richmond last season, and enjoying a season very much like the one Stewart is enjoying now. The Chase cut his lead to 30 points, and mechanical issues relegated him to an eventual 10th place. This year, Stewart is up 220 points on everyone else. But unless he wins some more races between now and the Chase opener in New Hampshire on Sept. 20, there's a chance he will actually start the playoff at a deficit. Many fans see that, shake their heads, and wonder what the point of the first 26 races is anyway.
Seeding the Chase based on victories, a method NASCAR implemented in '07 to try and prevent playoff-bound drivers from simply coasting in the latter portion of the regular season, was done with good intentions. But as we've seen this year -- best exemplified by Juan Montoya, who has sacrificed opportunities to win races in lieu of protecting his position in the top 12 -- it works only to an extent, and does nothing to correct the largest injustice rendered by the Chase system.
Should Stewart for whatever reason fail to win the title this season, and in doing become the fifth regular-season leader in six Chases to come up short in the playoff, alarm bells need to go off in Daytona Beach. The sanctioning body has dangled a carrot in the form of bonus points to entice likely Chase drivers to keep their foot on the accelerator. Now it needs to do something similar to reward regular-season champions who, like the leader on a late restart at a restrictor-plate track, too often wind up the helpless sitting duck.
Even something like a 50-point regular-season leader bonus -- a nice number, but certainly far from insurmountable -- would help reinforce the message that the first 26 races indeed mean something, and would help assuage those purists for whom consistency for an entire season is everything. Of course, it wouldn't guarantee that regular-season leaders would win the Chase.
But it would prevent ridiculous situations like that of '07, when Gordon did everything right yet somehow went from 312 up to 20 down as soon as the checkered flag fell at Richmond. It would almost certainly preclude unwieldy scenarios like the one that looms this season, when clearly the best driver (Stewart) could find himself starting the Chase at a deficit to someone (Mark Martin) who as of now may not even get in. Hey, it would be fun to write about Martin vaulting from 12th to first in one night. But that hardly protects the value of the regular season.
Really, the Chase has been better for NASCAR than some would give it credit. Title bouts like those that unfolded in '04 and '07 are inherently good for the sport, even if in some eyes the wrong man wound up winning the title. They're unpredictable, dramatic, great for television, and certainly more fun than watching one driver maintain a 200-plus-point lead for the remainder of the season.
But clearly, as the past five years have indicated, the Chase has a fairness problem. When the best driver through the first 26 races has only a .200 batting average in the final 10 events, something is wrong with the system. That's why so many fans are disgruntled. That's why the Chase struggles to gain traction among purists. And that's why at least one change needs to be made.
No question, there are some purists out there who despise the thing, who wish it would go the way of bias-ply tires and the hemi engine. They're spitting into the wind. Seasons like this one, overloaded with drama and intrigue over who will get in and who will fall out -- in lieu of what would otherwise be a runaway championship race -- only serve to justify its existence.
So enough of pining for something that will never happen. Enough of Monday-morning quarterbacking the day after the Homestead race, when plenty of fans shake their heads and point to the traditional points format and say, well, we all know so-and-so should really be the champion.
Enough of acting like Jimmie Johnson has somehow lucked his way into three consecutive titles because his rise has coincided with the Chase era, and he plays by the rules he's given better than anyone else. You don't hear baseball fans harping on the fact that the Boston Red Sox wouldn't have won their skid-snapping World Series in 2004 without the implementation of the wild card. Yet racing fans do the exact same thing every day.
So stop it. Five years ago, maybe, when the Chase was new and no one really knew how long it might be around, direct comparisons between the two playoff formats held a little merit. Not anymore. Now, such arguments seem as bitter and pointless as those waged by defeated party loyalists in the aftermath of a presidential election.
Does the Chase have its flaws? Absolutely. But there are no indications that NASCAR is going to change its championship format anytime soon. The Chase appears here to stay. Like Kyle Busch winning races or a Sprint Cup event in Southern California, it's something that fans are eventually going to have to come to grips.
Of course, embittered race fans are only part of the equation. The system could help itself. Every year in which a driver builds a large regular-season points advantage only to come up short in the final 10 races, the Chase loses some credibility in the eyes of NASCAR's most ardent fans. If hardcore racing supporters are really going to embrace this format, if they're truly going to accept the year-end champion as legitimate, then a driver who dominates over the first 26 races is going to have to finish the job.
The fact that it's happened only once in the now five-year history of the Chase stands as the format's greatest detriment, the very reason why so many traditionalists see it more as a made-for-television gimmick than a true method of determining NASCAR's season-long champion. The only driver to lead after 26 races and remain in front after the final 10 is Tony Stewart, who did it in 2005. But he's the exception, not the rule.
The rule is someone like Jeff Gordon in '07 or Kyle Busch last year, both of who saw big leads painfully evaporate during the last 10 races and watched someone else hoist the trophy in Homestead. That's the kind of thing that drives race fans, conditioned by history to accept a driver who has performed at a certain level throughout an entire season as champion, into fits of frustration. That's why a certain segment of the fan base still struggles to accept the Chase.
With good reason. In '04, eventual champion Kurt Busch finished the regular season in seventh place, 293 points behind leader Gordon. But he started the Chase only 30 points back and won the title by eight over Johnson. In '06, Johnson finished the regular season 57 points behind Matt Kenseth, but finished the Chase 56 ahead. In '07, Gordon enjoyed one of his greatest statistical campaigns ever, with six wins, seven poles and 30 top-10s. He ended the regular season with a 312-point advantage over the field. Johnson was in fourth place, 410 points back. And yet when the Chase started, Johnson was ahead by 20 points because of win-based seeding. When it ended, Johnson was ahead by 77.
Then there was Kyle Busch, 207 points up on everyone after Richmond last season, and enjoying a season very much like the one Stewart is enjoying now. The Chase cut his lead to 30 points, and mechanical issues relegated him to an eventual 10th place. This year, Stewart is up 220 points on everyone else. But unless he wins some more races between now and the Chase opener in New Hampshire on Sept. 20, there's a chance he will actually start the playoff at a deficit. Many fans see that, shake their heads, and wonder what the point of the first 26 races is anyway.
Seeding the Chase based on victories, a method NASCAR implemented in '07 to try and prevent playoff-bound drivers from simply coasting in the latter portion of the regular season, was done with good intentions. But as we've seen this year -- best exemplified by Juan Montoya, who has sacrificed opportunities to win races in lieu of protecting his position in the top 12 -- it works only to an extent, and does nothing to correct the largest injustice rendered by the Chase system.
Should Stewart for whatever reason fail to win the title this season, and in doing become the fifth regular-season leader in six Chases to come up short in the playoff, alarm bells need to go off in Daytona Beach. The sanctioning body has dangled a carrot in the form of bonus points to entice likely Chase drivers to keep their foot on the accelerator. Now it needs to do something similar to reward regular-season champions who, like the leader on a late restart at a restrictor-plate track, too often wind up the helpless sitting duck.
Even something like a 50-point regular-season leader bonus -- a nice number, but certainly far from insurmountable -- would help reinforce the message that the first 26 races indeed mean something, and would help assuage those purists for whom consistency for an entire season is everything. Of course, it wouldn't guarantee that regular-season leaders would win the Chase.
But it would prevent ridiculous situations like that of '07, when Gordon did everything right yet somehow went from 312 up to 20 down as soon as the checkered flag fell at Richmond. It would almost certainly preclude unwieldy scenarios like the one that looms this season, when clearly the best driver (Stewart) could find himself starting the Chase at a deficit to someone (Mark Martin) who as of now may not even get in. Hey, it would be fun to write about Martin vaulting from 12th to first in one night. But that hardly protects the value of the regular season.
Really, the Chase has been better for NASCAR than some would give it credit. Title bouts like those that unfolded in '04 and '07 are inherently good for the sport, even if in some eyes the wrong man wound up winning the title. They're unpredictable, dramatic, great for television, and certainly more fun than watching one driver maintain a 200-plus-point lead for the remainder of the season.
But clearly, as the past five years have indicated, the Chase has a fairness problem. When the best driver through the first 26 races has only a .200 batting average in the final 10 events, something is wrong with the system. That's why so many fans are disgruntled. That's why the Chase struggles to gain traction among purists. And that's why at least one change needs to be made.
