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JENSEN: Back To The Future
Maybe it's time for NASCAR to scrap the Chase and go back to the old way of crowning a points champion...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 18, 2010   Charlotte, NC
SPEED.com's Editor-in-Chief Tom Jensen. (Image: SPEED)
With the 2010 Chase for the Sprint Cup at its midway point, there are only three drivers who have a realistic chance of winning the championship this season: Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick.

Not coincidentally, they have been the three best performers on the season to date. Harvick had the most points in the regular season, Johnson and Hamlin have had the most race victories of any driver this year.

Jeff Gordon is fourth in points, 156 back of his teammate Johnson, virtually one full race, given that the most points one driver can make up on another in a single race is 161.

What’s happened in this year’s Chase is hardly surprising.

Last year, only two drivers were within 150 points of the leader with five races to go.

It was that way in 2008, too.

And 2007 and 2004 as well. In 2006, the fourth-place guy was more than 100 points back at this juncture.

In fact, in the seven years of the Chase format, there were more than three guys in contention at this point in the season only once, in 2005, when the top six were separated by just 54 points after Charlotte.

I mention this to make a point: NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France has talked about tweaking the Chase to include elimination rounds, hinting that starting next year the season might end with just the top two or three drivers duking it out in the season-finale in some type of winner-take-all format.

Let’s call a spade a spade here: NASCAR desperately wants to ensure that the same guy — read: Jimmie Johnson — doesn’t win the championship every year.

At a press conference earlier this year, France even went as far as to say that when NASCAR was analyzing formats for the Chase, they never once had a computer-modeling result that showed the same guy winning four years in a row. They’re as shocked at Johnson’s dominance as you or I am.

NASCAR wants the championship to come down to an action-packed final race every year, the kind of incredible drama there was in 2004, when Kurt Busch, Johnson and Gordon staged a remarkable battle. Unfortunately, most of the Chases since then have not come down to the wire. They’ve usually ended with the guy in the lead driving conservatively and taking the championship.
Jimmie Johnson has won the NASCAR Sprint Cup title in four consecutive seasons. (Photo: Getty Images)

In fact, since the Chase format was instituted, the points lead has never changed hands in the season finale.

Already, NASCAR has tried to had some sizzle to the Chase by expanding the field from 10 drivers to 12 and by awarding Chase bonus points to drivers for winning regular-season races.

Now, discussions are ongoing about changing the Chase again.

Personally, I think eliminating drivers as you go isn’t the answer. First, as illustrated above, racers eliminate themselves as the Chase goes on through wrecks, blown engines, running out of gas or any manner of other mistakes. If you have knock out rounds, all you’re doing is eliminating people who weren’t going to win anyway.

What does that accomplish?

The bigger issue is that whatever NASCAR decides this time, it needs to be right. Having twice tweaked the Chase already, NASCAR can’t afford to tweak it again in 2011 and have to make further changes in 2012 or ’13 or ’14.

The format needs to legitimately respect the NASCAR tradition of honoring a champion who demonstrates sustained excellence over a long period of time. It needs to recognize the driver who truly does the best job, not someone who gets hot at the right time. It can’t be a gimmick championship, because fans will reject that.

How about this? The whole field is eligible at the start of the season. Award points after every single race. At the end of the 36 races, the guy with the most points over the 36 races wins the championship. It worked from 1949 to 2003, and it still could.

Yes, you would have the occasional years like Matt Kenseth had where he stunk up the show, but you’d also have years like 1992, when the season came down to the final race, with five guys in title contention and the championship decided because Alan Kulwicki led one more lap than Bill Elliott did.

It’s a radical idea, I know, but it just might put the focus back where it belongs, on racers and on races. And it just might have a different ending, too.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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