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JENSEN: NASCAR Answerman
Written by: Tom Jensen   
05/30/2009
Charlotte, NC
 
The NASCAR Answerman on SPEEDtv.com - The Online Motorsports Authority ยป More Photos

In your article “LMS Races All Wet” you quoted Michael Waltrip as stating, “Who deserved to win the race?” Well, if you ask me I'd say the driver who led by far the most laps - Kyle Busch. Isn't it a shame that something like pit/rain strategy can put a much slower car into Victory Lane?

With today's technology I wouldn't think it'd be that hard to determine a finishing order of a rain (or otherwise) shortened race by averaging each racers scoring position over the laps that were completed. They log the running order every lap right? It could work something like this: Assign points for each driver each lap, one point to the driver leading a lap, two points to the driver being second, three for third and so forth. At the red flag, sum up each drivers points, divide by the number of laps - the finishing order would be lowest average points (which would mean highest average position) is the winner, second would have the second lowest average points, etc. Any ties could be broken by track position at the red flag. Those not running at the red flag would be scored as is currently.

Fastest guy wins! Don't you think that's fair? What do you think about an “average running position” scoring system for red flag races? I think it'd be good for the sport! Thanks! Keep up the good work! — Carl Osaki
Carl: Thanks for the suggestion, which you obviously put a lot of thought into. In every form of racing that I know of, the winner is determined by who finishes first on track,
period. If you were to adapt this system, NASCAR Sprint Cup races would be determined by where cars finish on the track in races that aren’t rain-shortened and average track position in races that are rain shortened. Is that what you want? Would that be fair? Honestly, I just don’t see that as being viable.

Two points to note here: 1. Every team at the Coca-Cola 600 had the chance to make the call that Rodney Childers and David Reutimann made at the end of the race. The 13 teams in front of Reutimann all guessed wrong; he and Childers guessed correctly. Do you want to take the element of strategy away from the race?

2. Trying to provide television coverage based on average running position would be a logistical nightmare. I don’t think NASCAR has the capability to provide average running position data in real time, and even if they did, it would be horrible to try and cover: “And Gordon passes Busch to improve his average running position from 17.3 to 16.8 …” That would be awful, IMHO.


How many NASCAR Sprint Cup races has Dale Earnhardt Jr. won with Tony Eury Sr. on the pit box, compared to with Tony Eury Jr.? — John Morse
John: Dale Earnhardt Jr. has had five crew chiefs in his NASCAR Sprint Cup career prior to this weekend. Here’s how he’s fared with each of them:
Tony Eury Sr., 183 races, 15 victories
Tony Eury, Jr., 118, 2 victories
Steve Hmiel, 14, 1
Pete Rondeau, 12, 0
Tony Gibson, 12, 0


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