Tony Stewart is half right about what it takes to win the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

“It’s not about good finishes; it’s going to be about guys who just don’t have a bad day,” Stewart said Sunday after spinning out his No. 20 Chevrolet and having Chase participant Kasey Kahne run into him.

“That’s all this Chase boils down to.”

Saying the system should be changed to make winning help a driver more than finishing poorly hurts him? That’s beyond beating a dead horse; it’s taking a hammer to a can of dog food.

But in a larger sense, Stewart is dead wrong about the 10-race playoff.

“I don’t think this Chase thing was thought out well enough,” he said. “The guys who have an opportunity to win the Chase are guys who just don’t have bad luck. That’s all there is to it. It’s not about anything else.”

That’s not total hooey. Luck will play a role in who wins – and loses – the title.

This just in: It always has.

The greatest championship race under the old system came in 1992. Alan Kulwicki edged Bill Elliott in the final race on a day when Davey Allison also had legitimate title hopes, and three others were mathematically in the picture.

With six races to go that season, Elliott led Harry Gant by 154 points and Kulwicki by 278. At Martinsville, Elliott blew an engine. His crew missed the setup at North Wilkesboro, and then a suspension part broke and Elliott hit the wall at Charlotte while running sixth with 39 laps to go.

Some of that was just bad luck, and if it hadn’t happened there would have been no dramatic championship finish.

What happened to Kahne on Sunday wasn’t fair, in the third-grade sense of that term, because he did nothing to deserve it.

As I have said many times (although I still can’t swear I didn’t steal this from somebody) “fair” is where you go to get funnel cakes and ride the Flying Bobs.

One reason a championship pays about $5 million these days is that winning one is hard. A team must perform at a high level in 26 races to make the Chase and then 10 in the Chase to earn the big trophy. Part of that is controlling everything you can. Part of it, too, is handling situations and circumstances that fall out of the sky into your path.

The Chase hasn’t changed that one iota. What it has done, however, is make that principle applicable to far more race teams at this point in the season than it used to be.

More teams now can be hurt by bad luck in September and October because the Chase keeps them in the hunt longer. The longer a team remains relevant in the Chase, the more chances it has to do great things – like Jeff Burton’s did in winning Sunday. It also means more chances for bad things to happen to good race teams.

NASCAR knows the system needs work and changes are promised. Those changes should be welcomed if they make running well more relevant than running poorly.

Even if no changes are made to the Chase, something else Stewart said Sunday would be dead wrong.

“Kasey can go out and win the rest of the races and not win the championship,” he said.

I’ll take that bet.