[media-credit name=”Greg Arthur” align=”alignright” width=”300″]
[/media-credit]Heading into Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400, Brad Keselowski has a 20 point lead over Jimmie Johnson with just 400 miles left in the 2012 season. However look at the points if the chase didn’t exist Keselowski’s lead over Johnson would be a mere 8 points.
Many believe the reason for the creation of the 10 race playoff format was Matt Kenseth’s 2003 season where he won only one race (Las Vegas) but recorded 25 top-10 finishes in route to winning the championship by 92 points over Jimmie Johnson. Since the chase’s inception in 2004 under the old Winston points format the championship has been decided by 60 points a season in the seven years under that scoring system. The closest battle was Kurt Busch and Jimmie Johnson in 2004, a battle Busch won by eight points.
Fast forward to 2011 when the new NASCAR points system was unveiled and the chase come down to one race at Homestead and the difference was in the win column where Tony Stewart out pointed Carl Edwards five wins to one, to win his third cup series title.
While the points battles have been closer under the chase format. It has left many fans clamoring for it to disappear from the Sprint Cup Series. Just by judging from the Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series and their points battles the last two seasons without a chase format leads me to believe we need to get back to the traditional 36 race every race matters points system. Case in point look at this year’s 2012 NCWTS battle where James Buescher beat Timothy Peters by six points after the checkers at Homestead.
It remains to be seen if NASCAR makes any changes to their scoring system or format after Sunday’s checkered flag flies but judging by what we saw in this year’s NCWTS we can hope NASCAR goes back to making all 36 weeks on the schedule matter. It would be a great start of putting people back in the seats every week at the race tracks and viewers in front of the TV’s at home.
