BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Jeff Gordon's greatest nemesis isn't a another driver or a racetrack, but a points system. For some reason, the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship has taken one of NASCAR's most successful, most marketable, and most personable drivers and transformed him into a snakebitten, firesuit-clad version of Greg Norman.

The thing thwarts him at every turn. In 2004, the year the revised playoff system was introduced, he finished third -- even though under the old structure he would have won, edging Jimmie Johnson by 47 points and eventual Chase champion Kurt Busch by a healthy 257. Last year he would have won the title by 353 points, capping one of the best seasons of his career with another crown. Instead, he started the final 10 races at a deficit after his big lead was wiped out by the system, and watched Johnson celebrate at the head table in New York. Had NASCAR not tweaked its championship system to try and generate better television ratings during football season, he'd almost certainly be chasing the mark of seven titles shared by Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.

Instead, like everyone else, he's chasing Kyle Busch. For all his accomplishments on and off the racetrack, Gordon has just never seemed comfortable in the Chase format, which essentially splits the season into two parts and forces drivers to be good in the first one and great in the second. Granted, had NASCAR stood pat with its old system five years ago, Busch's 222-point advantage might be seen insurmountable, siphoning interest and drama from the end of a 10-month-long sport.

Gordon understands all that, understands what's best for NASCAR in its entirety, gets the big picture as he always has. But he'll fully embrace this championship system under one condition.

"Only if I win it," he said Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway. "If I never win one, then obviously I'm going to feel like the old system suited us and my style better. The only issue that I have with it is, we build our sport on history, and you can't compare the history of the old points system to the new points system. You can't compare a champion, even myself, to any champion today. It's done differently."

For a driver like Gordon, from whom so much is expected every year, the Chase magnifies every imperfection. Under the old points system, he'd be just another driver pursuing Busch, someone in the midst of a career season. But the Chase turns NASCAR into a stock market where everyone's day trading. Who's up? Who's down? We've gone from viewing the season in its entirety to glimpsing little snapshots week by week. The results of one Sunday out of 36 take on an inflated importance. Twenty-ninth at Watkins Glen? Forty-second at Michigan? In a points system where every week is a lifetime, it feels like abject disaster. Sell! Sell! Sell! (Continued)