Editor's Note: Ben Blake is a long-time racing reporter and commentator known for his honest, perceptive and irreverent commentary. He started covering NASCAR and motorsports in 1982 with The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch and later spent 10 years as chief NASCAR editor for Racer magazine and for SpeedTV. He is author or co-author of five NASCAR-related books, including Dale Earnhardt: Determined, the authorized biography of Dale Earnhardt.
My first response to NASCAR's package of structural changes, announced Jan. 26 in Charlotte, was: fine thing. After years of diddling with details and tweaking (NASCAR President Mike Helton's and U.S. President Barack Obama's favorite word) around the edges, the cartel finally presented a comprehensive plan for conducting races and determining a champion.
Then it struck me: No matter what the positive radiation from the announcement, NASCAR CEO Brian France's single stroke of monumental silicone idiocy remains ? the so-called Chase to the Sprint Cup championship. As long as that bit of opium folly exists, confusion will continue to plague each season, and the sport's championship will stand as a joke.
First, what I liked: The idea of a simplified points system is a good one, and what could be more simple than awarding race points on a 1 to 43 scale for 43 finishing positions (assuming 43 racers continue to show at every event)? One recurring term in the talking-head talking points was that the fans won't need a calculator. This is quite true. And it also brings NASCAR more in line with the World Championship, American open-wheel, and weekly stock-car racing.
Good. Check one.
Also, I'll give NASCAR a hand for juicing up qualifying with some drama. Time trials, especially in the restricted era, offer a good opportunity for a three-hour nap, and really, what's a pole position without a speed record or some other brush with danger?
What NASCAR has done (and this certainly is not new, motorsports-wise) is to set the order of time trials according to practice speeds, with the fastest going out last. This puts some punch into practice, then lets the story build until the fastest man on the lot gets his chance.
Good. Check two.
Where the thing begins to break down is in computation of points for winning, leading laps, and leading the most laps. NASCAR persists in believing that running in front lap after lap after lap is worth a reward ? and is what the customers want to see.
I'm not so sure. My gosh, look at Talladega (and likely at the upcoming Daytona 500), where fellows hang in back for safety, then draft to the front to lead perhaps the final five laps. Look at the customers yawning, praying for a caution, as Jimmie Johnson leads 350 of 500 laps ...
The numbers game (three points for winning, one each for leading and for leading the most) also hints that it's wise not to pitch those calculators yet. And NASCAR's stated intention to tweak those numbers as situations require indicates that the clean, simple system proposed Wednesday won't be what it seems.
Another thing: As confusing as the Bob Latford/Phil Holmer points system, devised in 1975, could be, it lasted for 35 years and served its purpose as well as any other system could have. Remember too, that was supposed to be a simplification; the prior system factored race performance, money won, number of letters in your mother's maiden name, laps completed, and the weather forecast on the day of the entry deadline.
Where the thing begins to break down is in computation of points for winning, leading laps, and leading the most laps. NASCAR persists in believing that running in front lap after lap after lap is worth a reward ? and is what the customers want to see. I'm not so sure.
Apparently, Latford/Holmer couldn't stand the test of time, joining 11 previous championship systems. France, determined to build a feverish "playoff" for the fall stretch run, ignored the fact that NASCAR, with no elimination rounds, doesn't conform in any way to the playoffs in baseball and football.
The result was the horrid "Chase", forced on us in 2004 and (coincidentally?) concurrent with the sport's decline in stadium attendance and TV ratings. The thing is phony, contrived, and ultimately gag-worthy.
A measure of how well it works? Well, it's been changed/expanded/tweaked three or four times in its benighted seven-year existence.
The standard complaint about major changes to a championship system is this: How does a customer compare champion to champion when the method changes every few years? It's been shown (and Jeff Gordon quietly complained), that Gordon would have won his fifth NASCAR title in 2004 if not for the Chase. Fortunately, a comparison of old and proposed points systems show that Johnson would have won his fifth trophy last year under the new accounting ? but that's by one point, and did not factor in wins/laps bonuses.
Then there's this thing about winning -- the canard that fans want to see a team win a championship by winning. Why, then, do the customers (and the sanction) howl for handicaps when one team wins too much?
Recall that Alan Kulwicki, 1992 champion, won just twice all that season. Even with Ford backing, Alan's cars never were quite the equal of, say, Robert Yates's or Richard Childress's. Kulwicki won by racing with shrewd calculation, and with pure guts and unwavering desire. Alan's championship, to me, was one of the most heartening in the sport's history because it was so rare.
The bigger picture, of course, is whether or not any changes, great or tweak, will restore public interest in NASCAR, which peaked in the near-decade from 1997 to, oh, 2004. Despite Brian's sanguine state-of-the-sport pronouncements Wednesday, that has to enter the thinking of the sheiks in Daytona.
(It should be said that motorsports in general suffered a significant decline in interest through the first decade of this century; like boxing, it comes and goes.)
My guess is that the package of changes announced Wednesday won't do much to change public perception.
What will? Darrell Waltrip, always egotistical but always savvy, put a finger on it, or at least close to it. "We need some rivalries on the race tracks," said Waltrip, who was in the middle of a few such in a 30-year career. "It's not just about who wins."
Think about it. NASCAR's golden days featured cock fights in the ring, with Petty vs. Pearson, Waltrip vs. Yarborough, Waltrip vs. Earnhardt, Allison vs. everybody, Ford vs. Chrysler. Every weekend held the promise of the kind of action that made bubbles in your blood.
You still see little flashes of it ? Harvick vs. Biffle, Gordon vs. Burton last fall, a few others. But nothing that sparks a long-burning bonfire, that divides the grandstands into warring camps. Now that's excitement ...
The Chase? NASCAR continues to beat this dead horse ? a horse it bought dead in 2004 ? and as usual builds in an open-ended, wild-card concept to bring the number of contenders up to 12. More confusion.
(By the way, what's the magic number, the reset for the finalists after 26 events? Under the old system, that was 5000 marks. What will it be this year, 1200? Did I miss this?)
Get rid of it, NASCAR. Now. Then maybe I can start to take you seriously again.
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