Ryan Newman Winning the Championship Could Be the Worst Thing To Happen To This Chase Format

"bwp240" (bwp240) 11/15/2014 at 17:55 • Filed to: NASCAR

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For those who want to get rid of it...

Yep. At first I thought that Ryan Newman winning the NASCAR Championship this weekend would be a hilarious smack in the face to NASCAR's "winning is everything policy." Upon thinking about it, that is probably the worst thing that could happen. Why? Because we will most likely be stuck with this system forever.

Imagine this, a season focused on winning is won by a driver with zero wins. To some, that sounds stupid. People may feel that the non-winner shouldn't be allowed to compete for a championship instead of the winning drivers that were knocked out. Others will say that it is great and gives everyone a shot. This is the position NASCAR will take if Ryan Newman wins the championship.

NASCAR will love it... A driver with no wins beats all the winners and takes home the trophy. What an accomplishment, amazing! Brian France will sit in his gold throne and declare the new Chase system flawless and we will be stuck with it forever.

Now, winning a championship with 0 wins over your opponents is impressive (and surely would be with the old points system); however, with the Chase, is it truly a champion move, or did they just play the system. NASCAR was about the best driver and team out of the field after 36 weeks competition at various types of tracks across the country. Now, it is just a complete fuckfest.

I don't like the Chase. It allows drivers to win a race during the first 26 races and then putts around the remainder of the season, then poof they have a chance for the title where everything resets and you get an equal shot. F1's double points makes more sense than the Chase (at least everyone has a chance). With the way Kyle Larson and Jamie McMurray were running at the beginning of the Chase, double points would have made it interesting. Of course, the original points system is how it should be done. Keep the current point intervals and just tally up all the points from the 36 races and the one with the most is the Champion. How hard is that?

The NASCAR Championship is turning into a championship system as broken as the BCS was for college football, and soon the NASCAR Championship will become as insignificant as the BCS trophy.

NASCAR where the rules are made up and the points don't matter.

Now I know some of you are reading this thinking that I am a old has-been that is just living in the past or angry that my driver has never won the Chase or mad that Jimmie Johnson basically dominated (read: gamed) the system. No I just feel that a NASCAR Champion should be the best driver over the course of the whole season, not the best for 1/3 of it.

I always find the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! site very interesting. It goes through each Chase era year as if they used the original points system. NASCAR would have had a larger variety of champions and knowing the performances of those years, those champions were far more deserving than the respective Chase winners. Sure you may have the season championship clinched 4 races ahead of time because you lead by 400 points, but those teams deserve to win just as much as the teams that win by 1 point in the last race. With the closer competition being seen in the modern era of NASCAR I doubt we would see too many run away championships.

So this Sunday I will probably watch the race, and have a beer to toast what should have been Jeff Gordon's 7th championship.

That Bastard Kurtis - An Attempt to Standardize My Username Across Platforms > bwp240 11/15/2014 at 18:25

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Only NASCAR could have taken their old points system and actually manage to make it worse. My issue with the Chase is really just that the drivers aren't just scored amongst themselves...as I've always said, during the AFC Championship game, the Browns don't get to come onto the field and make plays. If you're going to eliminate the rest of the field, eliminate them and score the Chase drivers only amongst themselves.

greenagain > bwp240 11/15/2014 at 18:59

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I hope Newman wins. It'll make NASCAR look ridiculous. 0 wins, only 5 top 5's in 34 races. Yeah, I hope he's the champ.
I honestly didn't bother to try and decipher their new Chase rules at the start of the season, so I can't understand how Jeff Gordon can finish 2nd, win the previous race, and be eliminated.

jvirgs drives a Subaru > bwp240 11/15/2014 at 19:07

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Brian France set a terrible precedent when he stated winning is everything. This system actually balances winning and consistency. And to counter your point about putting around after winning, it was proven that it is not the case as the drivers that won, consistently ran up front and went for the win just about every week. Just because you win 4+ races doesn't mean you deserve to win the championship. In every system Nascar has had, there could have been a winless champion. Look at 2003. If Matt Kenseth didn't win Rockingham, which was the third race of the season, he would have still been champion and not won a race.

bwp240 > jvirgs drives a Subaru 11/16/2014 at 00:42

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I would not expect the winning drivers to just putts around simply because every racecar driver wants to win every race. However, they could do it. A driver could win a race then average a finish of 20th and still be in the Chase. I agree that winning a lot does not automatically warrant a championship. If Ryan Newman had been in contention for a championship the entirety of the season (by that I mean up to now using the old points), then he deserves to have a shot.

With the old system consistency and winning were the name of the game. You needed to be consistent over the entire 36 race stretch in order to have a shot. With the redo of the point values and the bonus for winning, I think we would have just as good competition. The Nationwide series and Truck series have had good points battles (until Reed and Sadler screwed up, but there are other problems with those series) and they don't have the Chase. I think it is stupid that someone could build a massive lead through solid performances and it all be wiped away just because NASCAR wants more action. It is like a 49-0 football game getting reset in the 4th quarter to make it closer.

bwp240 > That Bastard Kurtis - An Attempt to Standardize My Username Across Platforms 11/16/2014 at 01:27

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Yeah because every team "plays" each other in every race, a playoff just doesn't make sense to me. No other racing series uses a Chase outside of NHRA, that I know of.

Eliminating the rest of the drivers from competing would make the races incredibly boring. And watching the performances this year both Larson and McMurray had much better performances than the bottom rung Chasers.

bwp240 > greenagain 11/16/2014 at 01:31

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I think it will be funny if Newman wins, but I still think that in the end NASCAR will think that this is the best thing ever.

To make the Jeff Gordon thing simple, Newman was 8 points ahead of Gordon. In NASCAR each position expect for 1st is a point. Gordon needed to finish 9 positions ahead of Newman in order to win. Gordon finished 8 positions ahead, so he doesn't make it. (I don't remember if those were the exact numbers, but it's the same thing.)

That Bastard Kurtis - An Attempt to Standardize My Username Across Platforms > bwp240 11/16/2014 at 09:29

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Agreed. I'm not proposing a 4 car race, I'm just saying if you've got say 8 guys left, and one finishes 43rd, score him as 8th, not 43rd. That keeps it closer, I think.