 | | Brian France: "Wins early on are going to mean a lot more than they used to." Credit: Streeter Lecka/Getty Images |
By David Caraviello, NASCAR.COM
January 23, 2007
12:34 PM EST (17:34 GMT)
CONCORD, N.C. -- They will watch some yet-to-be-determined driver cross the finish line, toast him with a canned beverage of their choice, and applaud amid the lingering wisps of a burnout. Then the 107,000 fans at Richmond International Raceway will reach into their back pockets, pull out calculators, and try to figure out where Dale Jr. stands in the Chase for the Nextel Cup Championship. Gentlemen, start your abacuses. The long-awaited changes to the Chase for the Nextel Cup, announced Monday at the NASCAR Research and Development Center, promise to add more drama and intrigue to a sport that saw its television ratings dip last season. It may very well deliver on the track and off, as drivers fight to win early-season races that could decide their title hopes, and fans dust off old algebra texts in an attempt to figure out the thing. "I hope he's got his radio on. Maybe he'll listen to it, and then figure it out," Lowe's Motor Speedway president H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler said when asked if the fan sitting in the grandstand is going to have any idea of how things have shaken out following the final regular-season race on Sept. 8 at Richmond. "You don't want to make this thing too complicated. You don't want to have too much complication in the announcement itself, even though [the media] is going to have to tell people what it is. Should they be able to understand it? Well, yeah. But that's not the important thing. The important thing is what happens to our races during the season, and this is going to be a positive." NASCAR chairman Brian France said the idea for the revised formula came to him as he drove to the sanctioning body's Los Angeles office. He must have started in Albuquerque. The basics: • An extra five points for race winners, although other bonuses stay the same. • The 400-point window is gone, replaced by a 12-driver field. • Once they make the Chase, drivers are awarded 10 more points for every race they won during regular season, and seeded highest to lowest. Oh, but only the top 10 go to the postseason banquet in New York. And there's no more $1 million bonus for 11th place. And Dale Earnhardt Jr. is guaranteed a Chase berth for as long as he's able to grip a steering wheel.  |  | CHANGES ANNOUNCED | Wins will be more important than ever following changes to the points system and Chase.
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| FRANCE ON CHANGES | Part of the reason NASCAR tweaked its championship format, CEO Brian France said, was because the format lacked a way for "wild-card" teams to qualify for the Chase for the Nextel Cup.
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| DAVID CARAVIELLO | Changes to the Chase promise to add more drama and intrigue, but David Caraviello says fans should dust off their algebra texts to figure out the thing.
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| WHAT IF ... | NASCAR's decision to award five more points to the winner of each race had been in effect since the invention of the current points system in 1975, the record book would look quite different.
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| MESSAGE BOARD | What do you think of the changes to the points system and Chase format NASCAR has announced for 2007?
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Not quite. But adding two more drivers will help lessen the chances that bankable stars like Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, and Little E will be on the outside looking in. And the revised formula raises new merchandising opportunities -- how about a Kasey Kahne slide rule? "Hopefully, we've made it simple to understand. Four hundred points has never been an easy thing for everybody to tabulate as we go along. Now, it's 12," France said after the formal announcement, which came on the opening day of the Lowe's Motor Speedway preseason media tour. "I think wins in the first 26 [races] going toward your seeding, that's consistent with just about every other sport. Wins in the NCAA basketball tournament, NBA, anything, you'll typically see that wins have you seeded as you go into the postseason. We think it's consistent. We think it's simplified versus the old system. And we think it's the way to go." You can hear the groan from Daytona to Sonoma. Those who follow NASCAR, whether they're fans, media members or crewmen, are saddled with so many overcomplicated rules and regulations that cricket seems simple by comparison. First, you just had to know points. Then you had to know Chase scenarios. Now you've got to remember how many race wins each driver had during the regular season, and add the cosine of that to the square root of his average starting position, divide it all by the Pythagorean Theorem ... Well, maybe not. The point is, the whole thing is a little cumbersome. It's going to make a crazy night in Richmond even crazier. And by the way, it just might work. The revised format addresses the primary problem with the original Chase, which is that it rendered the first 26 races of the season virtually meaningless. From the minute it was unveiled three years ago, the Chase has been the sun that all things Nextel Cup revolve around. Nearly everything else has become an afterthought. Who won at Pocono? Who cares? How did the Chase contenders do? Races at places like Darlington and even Indianapolis became precursors to the 10-week main event. Now, with the added caveat that early season race victories will count toward a Chaser's starting position, maybe those first 26 will mean a little more. "It puts more emphasis on winning," France said. "Wins early on are going to mean a lot more than they used to." Good thing, because fans don't pay money to see drivers jockey for points position -- they pay to see them win races. The opinions expressed are solely of the writer. | 
