Lowe's Motor Speedway played host to the annual Media Tour in Charlotte, N.C., January 22-25, with hundreds of sports and motorsports media members taking part in the four-day event. Hundreds of interviews were conducted while a variety of organizations made announcements regarding the upcoming NASCAR season. No news made more headlines than the much anticipated adjustments to the Chase for the Championship format. NASCAR kicked off the week with the announcement that additional spots had been added to the Chase, more points will be awarded to the race winners, and there will be a change to the way drivers are ranked at the conclusion of the 26-race cut-off.UPS Behind the Scenes
For several months there have been talks about how NASCAR might revise the format for the three-year old Chase for the Championship system. Many have argued that race winners should be rewarded more than drivers that exhibited the best consistent performance. Others argued that the Chase was too limiting and that the 400-point window was too small to allow more than 10 drivers to compete in the Chase. As of January 22, all of that is changed.
Brian France, NASCAR Chairman and CEO, announced adjustments to the Chase format and overall point system. Beginning with the Daytona 500 in February, race winners will now receive 185 points for a win - an increase of five points from the last few years. Race winners can earn a possible maximum of 195 points now with the five-point bonuses awarded for leading a lap and for leading the most laps. Dale Jarrett, the 1999 NASCAR Cup Series champion, said the addition of points to race winners is something with which he agrees.
"I've always said that the winner should get more points for winning the race," Jarrett said. "It used to be that you could win the race and the guy that finished second could get the same number. We have escalated that some and this is just another step in that direction, which is good."
Changes to the Chase format include an increase in the number of drivers that qualify for the 10-race battle for the championship from 10 to 12. The 400-point rule, which never came into affect during the first three years of the Chase, has been eliminated.
The change to the Chase that made the most news however, is the "seeding" format which will be used to determine the driver order for the start of the Chase. In the past, whoever had the point standings lead after the 26th race was also the leader for the start of the Chase. Under the new format, that could change. This September, when the Chase for the Championship is set to begin, each of the 12 drivers will have 5,000 points. Drivers will earn an additional 10 points for each win earned during the first 26 races and then will be seeded according to that point total.
"Getting our team together is our biggest challenge," Borland said. "It's a matter of getting our road crew together and getting time off for them which means we have to have a shop crew that can have everything done ahead of schedule. It's a lot of people and a lot of coordination to make happen. With a new team it takes time and it takes making those mistakes for everyone to see where their shortcomings are. It will take a lot of learning and determining the who best fits the different roles.
NASCAR used the example from the 2006 season to explain how it will work moving forward. In 2006, Kasey Kahne was the 10th driver to make the Chase and was in 10th place for the start of the championship race. He also had a series-leading five wins when the Chase started. Under the new format, Kahne would have been the point leader for the start of the chase due to the bonus points awarded to Chase qualifiers who won races during the first 26 events.
The intent of the new format is to encourage teams to challenge for wins as opposed to perhaps settling for a top-five or top-10 finish and score the points awarded to such finishes. Jarrett says that motivation, however, is not needed.
"If it's intended to make racing better and to make us race harder, then you can't do that with points or money," he explained. "We're competitors and we're going to race hard to win every single time we go out there. You hear us talk about where we gained the most points that we could today or we accumulated the most by finishing the best that we could. That doesn't mean we're out there points racing all the time, but obviously you have to look at that in situations when you don't have the best car or when you had a flat tire and you had to come back from adversity. That's what we mean by that. There's no amount of points or money that you can put on winning because that's what we do. We go to try to win every single week."
Whether the new format results in closer race finishes remains to be seen. Jarrett believes the end result has promising implications.
"It will be an interesting situation, especially when you get to that 26th race," Jarrett said. "It may not be that person who has accumulated the most points that gets that reward of being on top. It's going to be who was the most successful at getting to victory lane, so it is certainly an interesting concept and it should be pretty interesting when that happens."
