CUP: Race Victories Do Matter, After All

Sprint Cup

CUP: Race Victories Do Matter, After All

NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France is expected to announce a new points system Jan. 21, 2011...

Tom Jensen | Posted December 04, 2010 Charlotte, NC

Race wins have been key to Jimmie Johnson's run to five Sprint Cup titles. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

A long-running debate in NASCAR is whether or not the current points system rewards winning enough or more emphasis needs to be placed on finishing first.

The current points system dates all the way back to 1974, when the late NASCAR historian Bob Latford drew up a points scheme on a bar napkin in the Boot Hill Saloon in Daytona Beach, Fla. The key element of the points system was that it punished drivers more for a bad finish than it rewarded them for good finishes.

There was a rationale for doing it that way at the time: NASCAR wanted to ensure that drivers made it to every race. Prior to Latford’s system, NASCAR used a weighted system that awarded more points for some races than others. NASCAR used a multiplier to calculate points — at times opting to use race purse, race distance, laps completed and races started, as that multiplier.

As a result, races that were shorter and didn’t pay as well as the bigger events had a hard time drawing full fields. On top of that, back in the days before personal computers and hand-held calculators, the points were fiendishly complicated to compile, and even more difficult for the average fan to understand.

So at the urging of NASCAR founder Big Bill France, Latford came up with the system: 175 points for the race winner at each Sprint Cup race, and a sliding scale of 5-, 4- and 3-point increments separating finishing positions, down to 34 points for last place. In addition, each driver who led a lap got five bonus points and the driver who led the most laps got an additional five bonus points.

Jamie McMurray, pictured here celebrating his win in the 2010 Daytona 500, said of the victory: "It's unbelievable. I can't really put it into words the way it feels." (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Latford’s original system has been tweaked several times along with way, most notably, of course, with the advent of the Chase for the Sprint Cup in 2004. In recent years, NASCAR has increased the amount of points a race winner gets from 175 to 185, with the gap between the winner and runner-up now 15 points.

When the Chase was adopted in 2004, the leader at the end of the 26-race Sprint Cup regular season began the Chase with his points total reset to 5,050. The other nine Chase drivers were reset in five-point increments so that the second-place driver had 5,045 points, while the third-place driver had 5,040, etc.

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Tom Jensen

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