Apparently, NASCAR will never learn the obvious lessons about its annual awards ceremony. Clearly, it’s dumb to ask a Nextel Cup driver to read from a TelePrompTer or yuk it up with a comedian who’s been rented for the evening.

You have to dismiss the banquet as a lost cause. So we move on and begin looking forward to a new season that begins Feb. 20 with the 2005 Daytona 500.

We don’t know if NASCAR will make changes to the Chase for the Nextel Cup under which Kurt Busch won this year. But given that Busch won by just eight points over Jimmie Johnson and 16 over Jeff Gordon, any change at all could impact how things turn out.

Busch won his first career title on the strength of nine top-10 finishes in the 10 Chase races, consistency that allowed him to hold on as Johnson closed the year with four wins in the final six races.

Of the 100 finishes in the Chase by the drivers competing for the title, 48 were top 10s, while 22 were 30th or worse. Busch was the champion despite finishing 42nd at Atlanta, the lowest finish by any Chase driver in the final 10 races, supporting the conviction that a Chase driver can afford one slip-up and stay in contention.

That’s just one year’s worth of data, though, and as the teams learn more about how the Chase works they may have to alter their approach in the Chase.

“My biggest mistake during the race in the final 10 was that I was really worried about what the other guys were doing,” said Elliott Sadler, who wound up ninth. “If they took two tires and we took four, I was worried about it being a mistake.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr., who wound up fifth, says he’ll start his different approach long before the Chase races.

“I won’t take all of the first 26 races so seriously,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I will have a little more fun with it, I think you can still have fun and still be successful. It doesn’t matter if you’re 10th, fourth or second going into the Chase, you just have to get there.”

Jamie McMurray learned that lesson this year, falling just short of 10th place after the 26th race at Richmond to miss the cut for the Chase. He wound up 11th in the standings despite having 23 top-10 finishes, second only to Gordon for the year.

“I think the thing that we maybe missed out on was bonus points,” said McMurray, who had only 30 of them for leading laps after 26 races. Ryan Newman, who got the last spot in the Chase by just 15 points over McMurray, had 80 bonus points at that stage.

“Maybe we’ll stay out and lead a lap if we’re the last car in the lead lap and it’s early in the race to go ahead and get those five bonus points,” McMurray said. “We were just racing trying to win every race and not looking at the big picture. That’s something we’ll definitely acknowledge next year.”

Teams will have to consider their testing strategies. Several teams saved the majority of their tests for late in the season, hoping to use them to bolster their bid to come out on top in the Chase. But with smaller spoilers and new tires on the cars for the start of 2005, can teams afford to stick to that plan and risk falling behind early, knowing they have to be in the top 10 after 26 races to make the strategy make any sense at all?

Of course, there’s another way of looking at the whole thing.

“The strategy is simple, but it’s difficult,” Newman said. “If you win you take care of everything, whether it’s in the first 26 races or the last 10. … You just have to focus on doing the best that you can and winning every race, just like everybody else, and that’s what makes it so difficult.

“If you win it takes care of everything, just like in any other sport. If you win and go undefeated you’re going to be the champion. We know it’s not going to happen, but that’s the goal.”