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I talk to my father about NASCAR a lot despite barely watching this year (mainly due to the way the chase is and how slow to change NASCAR is in regards to safety) even missing the Coke Zero 400 (though that was due to the fact they made it a Sunday night race instead of the recently traditional Saturday night since they stopped doing the historic July 4th firecracker date.) Often he brings up the gear ratio idea for plate tracks, which I keep replying that sounds good on paper like any theory, but needs to be tested. NASCAR needs to test to see that it don't cause packs or not. I only want a solution that gives safety but not at the expense of racing. See the fall 2000 race at New Hampshire for instance where Jeff Burton lead the race damn near flag to flag, the first and only time since the 1970's the restrictor plate was used outside of Daytona and Talledega. Gear ratios COULD work at removing the need for the plates or it could become the new plate instantly or in time. We wont know until it is tried.
As for the chase. I thought the new chase sucked when it was finally implimented last year. Say Kyle Busch gets in with the most wins, and then craps out week one and two and can't win in week three, he's out. I would feel bad for Busch just as I did at Daytona in the Xfynity race even though he is one of my least favorite drivers on the track. Just as I did last year, I actually am not rooting for my favorite drivers (Dale Jr and Brad,) nor am I Kyle (though I think he may deserve it this year,) I am rooting for a non-race winner to win the chase with no wins to blow up the system. Why, because TRUE fans (and even though I am younger I know this) that consistency wins titles even if it is consistently winning. The most consistant drivers always won whether it was the Winston era or the chase era (even last year Harvick was consistent) but I just don't like win an in in auto-racing. It is much different than stick and ball which is where playoffs with eliminations truly work. Before last year, there wasn't hard eliminations but say you had a bad Dega race, you pretty much wrote yourself out of the title.
this is why i like the new chase format, because it puts an emphasis on winning, as well as being consistent. you have to win to get into the chase initially, but you also need to be consistent enough to be in the top thirty in points. would top twenty five be better? perhaps.
but once inn the chase, you really do have to win to move on, otherwise you are eliminated. and last year there were two drivers that had no wins the entire season, and either one of those could have won the championship by finishing ahead of harvick.
the other thing i like about the new format is that one bad race does not kill your chances for a championship. lets say for instance you have a bad race at talledega, but you come back the next week and win the race. that means you automatically move on to the next round. in the last chase format, if you had a bad day at talledega, you had a big hole to dig your way out of, and that could be quite tough if the rest of the chasers were having good says the rest of the season.
the last thing i like is that there are guaranteed four contenders for the title in the last race instead of the points leader just having to start the car to win the championship, and yes that has happened too many times in the past. now the top four HAVE to race for the championship because the one finishing highest wins.
I hate the top 30 in points rule. I rather see it go down to top 20. Let's face it, there's too many scrubs that can win one of the three regular season plate races by being on the lead lap at the end who on a normal race weekend is no better than 20th (David Ragan and Aric Alrimrola) who are now in the chase taking it away from a much more consistent driver and team who for argument sake had top 5's all year. This is unfair to the competitive teams all year because it allows for start and parks or teams that are barely above that level to potentially sandbag and pull an upset on a plate and knock out a more consistent driver. This is why I rooted for Newman last year, to give the proverbial middle finger to France and blow up his sham of a perfect chase. Remember, David Ragan's Dega in 2013 was the "tipping point" for the new chase (despite the fact he was below the 20th in points cut off that year and would have been a one and done.
top thirty might make the field too large, i agree. perhaps a bit of fine tuning later on after the new format has been around a few years to see what happens. does someone win one race in the regular season, finish say twenty ninth in points, make the chase, and then get real consistent all of the sudden and point their way into the final race and win the championship by finishing say second in the final race to someone that say got knocked out in the previous round, but had say five wins to that point.
nascar did that for a few decades. too many times over those few decades the champion was essentially crowned the race before the last one of the season. too many times the champion only had to finish 18th or better to win said championship. that meant that the points leader would run just fast enough to finish say 15th to allow for a small cushion. and that gets boring.
To you maybe. Go watch football then. Or a demolition derby if that suits your short attention span.
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how many sports teams who dominate the season win the championship in the end? not as many as you might think. take the denver broncos a couple of seasons ago. they were supposed to be a lock to win the super bowl, and yet the seahawks killed them. or how about the arizona cardinals the year they played the steelers in the super bowl? they wre not even supposed to be in the super bowl and yet they nearly won said super bowl.
and how many times have the yankees dominated the baseball season and lost the world series, or didnt make the series? the year the diamondbacks won the series, they were no even supposed to be there.
Racing isn't baseball or football or basketball. Sorry, they don't work the same.
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tough, thats why its called racing. as i noted above, how many teams in other sports dominated their season and didnt win the championship? or like mike tyson fighting buster douglas. everyone thought tyson was going to pound douglas and knock him out in the first round, and yet douglas ended up winning the fight.
and how many people thought in 1997 that the arizona wildcats, fifth place in the pac-10 and seeded number four(iirc) in their region, would take down three number one seeds to win the ncaa tournament? even i didnt think it would happen in real life, and i am a huge wildcat fan.
When you dominate a season-long championship, you deserve to win said championship. And predictions have nothing to do with it. I'm sure everyone thought the 48 was going to win the title again last year, and he wasn't even close. Big deal. Did anyone think guys like Benny Parsons or Bobby Isaac had a shot to win their championships when guys like Petty and Pearson were still in their prime? Do you even know who these guys are?
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but remember in the past how many times the nascar champion only had to finish 18th or better to win said championship in the last race? too many times competitors were eliminated from the championship hunt with several races to go in the season, and the rest ended up fighting for third place on the season.
the chase is a solution to that old scenario. is it the best one? i dont know. but i don know that last season there were four drivers with the chance to win the championship in the last race of the season, where as in seasons past one driver was always running middle of the pack and staying out of every ones way, and trying their best to stay out of trouble. and in my opinion that isnt championship racing. championship racing is supposed to be a number of competitors all with a real shot at winning the championship, and all of them having to put forth their best effort to win that championship.
Big deal. They dominated the season and deserved to win. What about 1992 where 6 guys had a shot to win the title at Atlanta, and the points leader crashed out? Manufactured excitement is not excitement. That's like crowing that John Cena is a better champion than Floyd Mayweather. One is a manufactured champion, the other is not. There's a reason why the stands are empty and the ratings are in the toilet. That wasn't the case in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, when all this "boring" racing you're talking about was taking place. Go watch some videos of Earnhardt, Rudd, Labonte, Richmond, Elliott, Wallace, and Gordon in action. THOSE guys could put on a show without Brian France manufactured bull****. You couldn't sit out half the season and still have a shot at a title. You had Ricky Rudd racing with his eyes taped open, you had Labonte racing with a broken arm. Now what do you have? You have Denny Hamlin climbing out of the car at Bristol with a headache. You have Kyle Busch on his couch for half the season and still in title contention.
Under your system, a guy could win the first 35 races in a row, and finish 2nd in the final race and NOT win the championship. If you can't find something wrong with that, you have some real thought process issues. Seriously.
The driver who accumulates the most points in the season is the best performing driver. Not the guy who wins the last race because of some 10 weeks of good luck.
Just throw out the friggin restrictors. Real racers don't need no restrictor plates.
Last year in the new "Chase" we got to Homestead and there sat Ryan Newman who only had to finish higher than 3 other drivers in that race to win the Sprint Cup title. He almost did, finishing 2nd to Kevin Harvick.
Some series "Championship" run that would have been. No wins all year (well, maybe one had he won Homestead to finish ahead of Harvick). He finished in the top five just five times. 16 top 10's in 36 races. 41 laps lead for a whole season.
So I am not buying NASCAR's marketing that this new chase format emphasis giving titles to winners and drivers who run consistently at the top. Maybe it is supposed to do that, but I have already seen that there are a lot of holes in their format.
Last year in the new "Chase" we got to Homestead and there sat Ryan Newman who only had to finish higher than 3 other drivers in that race to win the Sprint Cup title. He almost did, finishing 2nd to Kevin Harvick.
Some series "Championship" run that would have been. No wins all year (well, maybe one had he won Homestead to finish ahead of Harvick). He finished in the top five just five times. 16 top 10's in 36 races. 41 laps lead for a whole season.
So I am not buying NASCAR's marketing that this new chase format emphasis giving titles to winners and drivers who run consistently at the top. Maybe it is supposed to do that, but I have already seen that there are a lot of holes in their format.
dont forget that the original chase format was done because matt kennseth won the championship with only one win the entire season, and the fans complained.
dont forget that the original chase format was done because matt kennseth won the championship with only one win the entire season, and the fans complained.
Good point, although not totally unprecedented either. Although a while ago, Benny Parsons had a 1 win, Championship season. Alan Kulwicki had 2 wins in his, as did Terry Labonte in both his title seasons.
The chase, in general, has had drivers with some wins. To it's credit, usually the winner of the chase gets hot and collects a couple wins during the chase. The new format is supposed to promote that more and may in general do that too. Newman may have been a rare exception, but it worried me to see it right off the bat.
Maybe a tweak could be mandating that all the drivers in competition at Homestead must have won during the chase and not allowing advancement on points alone?
When you dominate a season-long championship, you deserve to win said championship. And predictions have nothing to do with it. I'm sure everyone thought the 48 was going to win the title again last year, and he wasn't even close. Big deal. Did anyone think guys like Benny Parsons or Bobby Isaac had a shot to win their championships when guys like Petty and Pearson were still in their prime? Do you even know who these guys are?
yes i know who those guys were, i have been a fan since the late 60s. however just because you dominate the season long races, does not mean you deserve the championship, especially if you cant close the deal.
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Big deal. They dominated the season and deserved to win. What about 1992 where 6 guys had a shot to win the title at Atlanta, and the points leader crashed out? Manufactured excitement is not excitement. That's like crowing that John Cena is a better champion than Floyd Mayweather. One is a manufactured champion, the other is not. There's a reason why the stands are empty and the ratings are in the toilet. That wasn't the case in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, when all this "boring" racing you're talking about was taking place. Go watch some videos of Earnhardt, Rudd, Labonte, Richmond, Elliott, Wallace, and Gordon in action. THOSE guys could put on a show without Brian France manufactured bull****. You couldn't sit out half the season and still have a shot at a title. You had Ricky Rudd racing with his eyes taped open, you had Labonte racing with a broken arm. Now what do you have? You have Denny Hamlin climbing out of the car at Bristol with a headache. You have Kyle Busch on his couch for half the season and still in title contention.
i watched those guys do the things they did, davey allison driving with a broken arm, heck back in those days one driver raced right after he got his cast put on(i forget which driver though). actually had his arm taped to the gear shift. after the race he cut the cast off himself, and fashioned a new one for the next race. he did this each week until he developed a cast that was lightweight enough for him to use in the race, and allowed him the use of his hand.
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Under your system, a guy could win the first 35 races in a row, and finish 2nd in the final race and NOT win the championship. If you can't find something wrong with that, you have some real thought process issues. Seriously.
first off its not my system, its nascars. and second, if the guy that won 35 races in a row cant finish the deal, then there is something wrong with him not me. like i say this is just like the playoff in baseball or basketball. you gotta earn your way in, and then you have to finish the deal. how many times over the years have you listened to the announcers try to manufacture some excitement for a final race where the points leader only had to finish 18th or better to win the championship? they would tell how the second place points guy was doing everything he could to win the championship, leading the most laps and running up front all day long. and then they would say can the points leader sustain his 14th place position in the race?
the 1992 final race was great, but it was an anomaly. well these days, until the format is changed again, you will have four drivers in contention to win the championship every season, and they will all have to run hard the entire race if they want to win the championship. none of this he needs to finish 18th to win the championship bullcrap. thats like saying the yankees only have to win one world series game in seven to win the world championship.in my opinion the last race of the season should be just as exciting as the first race, otherwise it becomes anticlimactic. just another race.
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No wins all year (well, maybe one had he won Homestead to finish ahead of Harvick). He finished in the top five just five times. 16 top 10's in 36 races. 41 laps lead for a whole season. 
