BRISTOL, Tenn. -- The man in black would have been known as a great driver, but not necessarily a larger-than-life one. The Intimidator persona would have been a little softer around the edges, if it ever developed. All those No. 3 flags might never have been hoisted. NASCAR's greatest icon would have completed his career as a two-time champion, and perhaps never even emerged as an icon at all.

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I like the fact that you have to be a consistent front-runner. You do those things on a consistent basis, the more races you run, the more important that becomes.

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-- JEFF BURTON

You want to emphasize victories more than anything else? You want to determine a champion by race wins, and not a points system? Then be prepared to suffer the consequences. There's no greater evidence of the fallacy of determining a champion exclusively by race wins than the knowledge that Dale Earnhardt -- called NASCAR's "greatest driver ever" by none other than former chairman Bill France Jr. upon his untimely passing at Daytona in 2001 -- would have seen his legendary status severely eroded under such a system.

Recent discussions in Formula One about adopting a championship format based solely on race wins have generated plenty of discussion on the same topic this week at Bristol Motor Speedway. No question, there are many NASCAR fans who pine for such a system, especially after watching Carl Edwards finish second to Jimmie Johnson last season despite amassing two more victories. Let's get this straight right now -- there's no evidence that NASCAR is even remotely considering such an idea, which is just fine with the men who pilot these 3,400-pound stock cars each weekend.

"I think if you determine your champion just based on wins, you're taking a huge gamble of having the wrong champion," Edwards said. "If one guy wins one race and runs 20th in the rest of them, and another guy finishes second in every single race, [the first] is not the right guy for a champion. The more and more I pay attention to all of these changes with all these point systems all over the board, the more I like the Nationwide Series and the Camping World Truck Series, where the guy with the best average finishing position throughout the year wins. I think the farther we get away from that, the bigger the chance of changing our sport to try to fit in with others and I don't think that's best for us." (Continued)