NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: NASCAR Eyes Simplicity With Changes
Race wins will gain in importance only in respect to Chase potential…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted January 27, 2011   Charlotte, NC
NASCAR President Mike Helton (Far Left), flanked by NASCAR spokesman Kerry Tharp (Center Left), speaks with reporters after Wednesday night's announcement about the NASCAR points system at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. (Photo: Getty Images)
It’s possible that NASCAR fans in favor of a bigger emphasis on race wins didn’t get all that they wanted from NASCAR’s Wednesday night announcement of rules changes for this year.

Although officials said they devised the new plan to underline the importance of winning, the switch to the 43-1 point system and its bonus points appears to be basically a small-scale version of the system that has been in use for decades. There is no greater prize for winning – only three bonus points and one additional point for leading a lap. The winner of a race will receive at least 47 points (43 for winning, three for the bonus and one for leading a lap) and possibly 48 (if the winner also leads the most laps).

As far as the points-system change goes, the effect on winning is negligible, at best.

Winning, however, plays a significant role in the announcement’s other major change – the way the Chase field is filled. After the first 10 Chase positions are taken by the top 10 drivers in points, the other two spots will be filled by the drivers with the most wins who aren’t already in the field (assuming they also are in the top 20 in points).

If, for example, Mark Martin and Martin Truex Jr. win two races each but finish 15th and 16th in points, they’ll make the Chase if no other drivers outside the top 10 have more than one win.

This change potentially makes the Sept. 10 race at Richmond International Raceway, the final race of the “regular season,” a dynamite event. The field could move into that race with numerous drivers having a shot at making the Chase despite being out of the top 10 in points.

“It definitely gives somebody who’s 19th or 20th in the point standings a situation where they could get in with one more race win,” said Tony Stewart, who praised the rules changes. “Typically at Richmond, there have been two or three guys with an opportunity to get in. Potentially, there now could be nine or 10 guys who would have that same chance.”

Although some expected the points-systems changes to offer a bigger reward for race wins (bonuses of 10 or more points were mentioned), NASCAR president Mike Helton said the sanctioning body wants to continue to reward solid consistency during the season while also putting more power behind victories.

“We have to manage the sport under the circumstances of a very long season – Valentine’s Day to Thanksgiving,” Helton said. “Our culture, our kind of racing is around that whole spread – combining and balancing wins with continuity. That’s how we make our decisions.

“There’s a line where if you add too much on wins, then the championship could be wrapped up in the first two or three races in the Chase. We could do anything we wanted to within reason, but we choose to balance winning with the continuity of a long season.”

Helton addressed questions about the changes by saying that NASCAR did move toward rewarding wins.

“I think the changes we made end up putting emphasis on winning,” he said. “There are the two spots in the Chase deal. The change in calculating points is just an effort to engage fans in relation to the points, actually hoping to engage them so they can get more jazzed up about it.”

Helton said officials decided to use the points top 20 as a cutoff for possible race-win Chase qualifiers because it’s reasonable and convenient. It’s easier to work with points, he said, than, for example, simply requiring anyone with a race victory to have competed in every race to qualify for Chase eligibility.

“We use the top 20 because that’s reasonable,” he said. “It wasn’t outlandish.”

Stewart, often a NASCAR critic in the past, called the changes exciting.

“You don’t know how the points structure is going to work out, but it’s easy to understand. In this era of sports, we’re competing with a lot of other professional entities, and the easier you can make it for everybody to understand the more you can get them directly engaged in what we’re doing and the more appealing it is.

“We’re all competing for the same people in the same economy. Anything they can do like this that makes it easier for the fans, I don’t see where it’s a bad thing.”

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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