Has NASCAR's new championship format for the Nextel Cup Series made winning any more of a priority than the old one?
That's a particularly pertinent question going into Saturday night's Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, the 24th race among 26 that will choose the 10 drivers who'll spend the season's final 10 weeks fighting for this year's championship.
When Jeremy Mayfield stretched his final tank of fuel to win last week at Michigan, he became the 10th different driver to win a race this year.
Only six of those drivers, however, would qualify for the Chase for the Nextel Cup if the cutoff came today instead of three races from now. Jeff Gordon, a three-time race winner in 2005, would be left out of the title mix, as would Mayfield, Kasey Kahne and Kevin Harvick.
Rusty Wallace, Mark Martin, Ryan Newman and Jamie McMurray, meanwhile, would be in the Chase without having won a points race this season. As much as they'd like to, Wallace and Martin certainly don't need to win here or at California and Richmond in subsequent weeks to wrap up spots. Wins would help Newman and McMurray more, of course, but it's not a requirement for them, either.
Should it be?
When Mayfield's team elected to bring his No. 19 Dodge in on the final lap of what turned out to be the final caution of Sunday's race at Michigan, it did so with the intent of staying on the track the rest of the way to try to win.
Even though crew chief Slugger Labbe knew that Mayfield's car had gone 52 laps on one fuel load in a test at Michigan, it was still a gamble. Michael Waltrip, who also topped off on the final caution, ran out of fuel in the final moments of the race. Had Mayfield done the same, not only would he have lost a potential race victory but he could have suffered a blow to his hopes of making the Chase for a second straight year.
"You race to win," Labbe said. "You wake up every day, waking up thinking you can win races. That's what we did today. We had a 20th-place car, took a gamble and won the race. We're here to win, and that's what pays the bills. It pays the most points and helps to pay the bills, so that's all you can do. That's all we know how to do."
But is that attitude still the predominant one in the sport?
The inaugural Chase last year showed that winning is not necessarily the best formula for claiming a title. Kurt Busch won one of the final 10 races and Jimmie Johnson won four, but Busch won the championship with nine top-10 finishes while Johnson's late rally fell short after he'd struggled early in the Chase.
There certainly is no less talk now about the "big picture," a euphemism for "points racing," than in 2003 and before. Drivers might be even more points-obsessed than ever, both in trying to qualify for the Chase and in trying to win a championship in it.
Jeremy Mayfield's fuel gamble paid off with a victory in last week's race at Michigan.
And there certainly seems to be no less chance that a driver could win the championship without winning a single race all year - something that has never happened in NASCAR's top series but still certainly could.
"The Chase is really based on trying to build excitement and push guys to be more aggressive and win more races," says Gordon, who finds himself 58 points behind 10th-place McMurray going into Saturday night's race. "We've got a points system that's built on consistency and then we change how it's structured to make this exciting 10-race stretch but then it's still about consistency.
"A guy could finish top five every weekend in those last 10 races and still win that championship. It's very possible that it could happen.
"The guys who haven't won a race yet who have been consistent and are in the top 10, I'm curious to see, if once they get into the Chase if they step it up a notch. Is it that they're playing that card because they just want to secure their position in the top 10 and they know their consistency over 26 races will do that? Then they'll start pushing the limits of getting aggressive?"
We'll see.
Comments
LJWorld.com doesn’t necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full policy. Also, read about banned accounts and harassing comments.