Rewarding the field for Speed

 

Mark Martin has four poles in the Sprint Cup series this year. Photo from cbssports.com.

 

              While watching NASCAR Race Hub today on Speed, an interesting point was brought up. In the Overdrive segment with Bob Dillner (@bobdillner), and Matt Clark (@MattClarkMC) were discussing the fact about giving bonus points for qualifying. I had thought about this a while back, and adopting more of a points system along the lines of Formula 1. With them, there is a high premium on qualifying, and they only give point down through 10^thplace. A typical field of cars for them would be 25. But anyway, back to the segment on Race Hub.

            It was stated that maybe three points should be given for pole, two for second, and one for third starting position. Well I wasn’t sure how much of a change it would have had on the points, so I did some research. I will highlight some of the battles instead of just throwing out a ton of numbers. After the Atlanta race, Brad Keselowski and Denny Hamlin would be tied with 833, instead of Keselowski having a nine point lead over Hamlin. Harvick would leap frog Bowyer, and lead by four points. The most interesting part of the point system would have to deal with the battle between Kyle Busch, and Jeff Gordon to get into the chase.

Kasey Kahne also has four poles this season in the Sprint Cup series. Photo from the Chicagotribune.com.

           
            Kyle Busch had 746 points compared to Gordon’s 734, but with the bonus for qualifying Busch would have 758 to Gordon’s 739 after Atlanta. Gordon would receive two bonus points under this system for his 2nd place starting position, so the gap would close from 19 to 17. You have to account for the change in racing, because changing the points like this would change a lot throughout the season. Besides that, if we played out Richmond like it happened, Kyle Busch would have led Gordon by two after the race. Kyle Busch would be in the chase if this format was adopted. The last race was exciting already, but if Gordon knew that he needed to win that race, what else would have happened? Would we have another Paul Menard incident, but instead of Childress, it was Hendrick quarterbacking a caution? We will never know unfortunately.

            I think this would be a good thing for NASCAR to look at, as well as Matt Clark’s thoughts about a chase mulligan, even though Bob Dillner is totally against that idea. What you didn’t see about the points system other than what I talked about above was how it tightened everyone. Changing those few of points could mean the difference in two-tires, fuel only, or no pitting. The excitement level would go up for the racing just by giving incentive for an event that is struggling for our fans to watch anymore. Just think about how different this chase would have been had Kyle Busch been there. Until next time.