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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
JENSEN: The Trouble With Fixing Problems
If I try to make suggestions about how to fix a problem, my wife and I tend to end up in a protracted debate that accomplishes little...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted December 29, 2009   Charlotte, NC
SPEED.com's Editor-in-Chief Tom Jensen. (Image: SPEED)
My wife tells me that one of the myriad failures of the male species is that by nature, we are fixers. We see a problem, it’s our nature to immediately jump into the middle of it with all our energies and do our level best to correct the problem.

Now, personally, I don’t see that as so much of a failure as I do a positive thing, but she insists that sometimes all women want to do is vent a little bit — complain, maybe even whine for a moment and then move on. And so I’ve learned over the years to occasionally fight my instincts to fix and instead just shut up and listen. After a few minutes of venting her problems, she feels better and lets go of whatever issues she has.

If I try to make suggestions about how to fix the problem, we tend to end up in a protracted debate that accomplishes little, if anything, in terms of making her feel better. Instead, it just gets me agitated, too.

And, no, you aren’t reading Dr. Phil.

There is a NASCAR-related point to all of this.

In 2003, Matt Kenseth obliterated the Sprint Cup field en route to giving car owner Jack Roush his first series championship. At the one-quarter-mark of the season, only one driver was within 100 points of Kenseth, and halfway through the season, he had a lead of more than one full race over the whole field.

It got worse: After the September Richmond race, the 26th of 36 events on the 2003 schedule, Kenseth’s lead was a whopping 418 points — nearly three full races ahead of his closest competitor. Kenseth’s amazing run sucked all the life and all the drama out of the points race that year.

So after the season ended, NASCAR — which is mostly run by men — did what men do in that situation: They fixed it.

The end result was the Chase for the Sprint Cup: 10 drivers, 10 races in a playoff format to settle the championship.

After the September 2004 Richmond race, the top 10 drivers were separated by a mere 45 points, with Jeff Gordon leading. What ensued was high drama, with Kurt Busch opening up a big lead only to be run down by Jimmie Johnson’s furious late-race charge.

In the 2004 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, a wild race saw Busch lose a tire and miss the front pit wall by literally inches, but somehow stay on the lead lap. When the green flag fell, Greg Biffle was 0.342 seconds ahead of Jimmie Johnson, who finished 8 points behind Busch, with Gordon third, 16 points back.

It was a remarkable way to end the year and it pumped new life into the long and occasionally dull Sprint Cup season.

Problem fixed, right?

Well, maybe. Maybe not.

As we all know, Johnson has now won four consecutive titles, with a blow out run in 2009, that saw only one driver finish within one race of Johnson in terms of points. And seven of the 12 Chasers this year finished more than two races behind Johnson this year. It was not the outcome NASCAR predicted or planned for when it instituted the Chase.

“Any models we ever did on anything of how things would likely play out never included somebody who would be so dominating at the right time,” NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France said of Johnson’s historic performance.

Of course it didn’t. The whole point of resetting the standings for the playoff round is to make the final playoff push as unpredictable and wide open as possible.

So does that mean the Chase needs to be fixed again?

I would argue against it.

There’s nothing wrong with the system — it’s just that Johnson and his Hendrick Motorsports team have figured it out better than anyone else has and is kicking everyone else’s asses right now. It’s got little, if anything, to do with the format, and everything to do with how well the No. 48 team performed down the stretch.

Where there is an opportunity to tweak things is in the 2011 schedule, which likely will be a good bit different with the addition of a second race at Kansas and possibly one at Kentucky Speedway as well. Changing the mix of track in the Chase would generate new interest and might even result in a new series champion.

But as far as the Chase format itself, it doesn’t need to be fixed.

Just ask my wife.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED, and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com! Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to



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