The one thing this lockdown period allows is a chance to review some past events and take a look at where they fall in terms of context. How have they aged? How different are they from what we see they? How does it view all these years later?
One season is timelier now in the NASCAR universe with news of Ryan Newman's medically clearance and plan to return to competition and Matt Kenseth's introduction as the driver of the #42 Chevrolet for Chip Ganassi Racing.
Kenseth and Newman are lynchpins to the final NASCAR Winston Cup Series season. The 2003 championship stands for the final year of the tobacco title sponsorship, the final year for a 36-race aggregate champion and Kenseth's championship despite one victory while Newman took eight victories.
The 2003 stat sheet provides a peculiar set of numbers and like many NASCAR seasons from the modern-era it is hard to explain the results just looking at the numbers.
Kenseth's season is remembered the lone victory but remarkable consistency. The Wisconsinite picked up 11 top five finishes and 25 top ten finishes from 36 starts. He retired from only two races. However, Newman's record suggests championship worthiness with eight victories, 17 top five finishes and 22 top ten finishes. Newman led NASCAR in victories and top five finishes. He had double the number of victories of the next best driver. His 22 top ten finishes were second only to Kenseth. Let's not forget to mention the 11 pole positions.
Despite all Newman accomplished, he wasn't even in the top five of the championship, coming home in sixth, 311 points behind Kenseth but also 59 points behind Kevin Harvick in fifth. Harvick's season mirrored Kenseth, same number of victories and same number of top five finishes but Harvick scored seven fewer top ten finishes than the champion, four fewer than Newman.
The points system utilized from the 1970s until 2010 made many NASCAR championship result unexplainable. Victories matter but were quickly counterbalance with top ten finishes. There just never seemed to be enough weight behind a first-place finish.
For those familiar with my work, you know I have a certain appreciation for the 9-6-4-3-2-1 points system Formula One used from 1961-1990. The simpleness makes it easy to follow but it rewards only the most successful drivers. A victory is 33.333% more than a runner-up finish and only about a quarter of the grid scored points. Even Formula One's current points system remains quite simple though paying more points and a victory is still 28% more than a runner-up result and though half the grid earns points the final points-paying positions are a small percentage of a victory.
Both systems eradicate the value of a poor finish. The worth of 12th is the same as 28th. There is no difference in finish 23rd and 24th. At some point these finishes far from the front bear no difference. While NASCAR paid positions all the way down it made 24th and 36th a 31-point difference. While 24th is better than 36th there comes a point where these finishes are all the same and that has been the one issue with any NASCAR system.
How would the championship had faired with either streamlined approach?
In the 9-6-4-3-2-1 system Newman would have clinched the title at Phoenix with two races remaining. He would have ended the year on 99 points and 25 points clear of Jimmie Johnson in second. Jeff Gordon would have been third on 69 points with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. on 68 points and Kurt Busch rounding out the top five on 64 points.
Bobby Labonte would have been a spot behind Busch with Kevin Harvick on 59 points and Tony Stewart on 57 points.
Kenseth would have dropped to ninth in the championship with 54 points but he would be 20 points clear of Michael Waltrip and Bill Elliott, who would be tied for tenth but the tiebreaker would go to Waltrip on account of his two victories to Elliott's one.
While Newman would be the big winner and Kenseth the big loser, Johnson would remain in second, while Earnhardt, Jr. and Gordon would have merely swapped positions from the actual 2003 standings. Busch would be another major benefactor, leaping from 11th to fifth with his four victories.
Most of the top ten in the championship sees minor shifting, Labonte up two, Harvick down two, Stewart down one.
In the current Formula One points system, Newman would clinch the title at Phoenix and end the season with 326 points. Johnson would be second again on 265 points, four ahead of Earnhardt, Jr., 15 ahead of Gordon and Kenseth would round out the top five on 247 points.
Labonte would be sixth again with 227 points, eight ahead of Harvick and ten ahead of Stewart. Busch would be ninth on 201 points with Waltrip in tenth on 146 points, 15 markers clear of Elliott.
The contrast in the two systems shows where Kenseth was superior and that was in finishes of seventh to tenth. Eleven of Kenseth's top ten finishes were results of seventh, eighth or ninth. With inflated point totals for the top six positions, plus those 11 other results and Kenseth is still a top five championship driver despite one victory. Meanwhile, Busch with his four victories drops to ninth in the championship because he had only four finishes of seventh to ninth.
After more than a decade of tinkering, NASCAR found its fit with this current playoff championship format. I doubt it will be making any more significant changes any time soon but this is NASCAR. Nothing can be ruled out. Any future changes should look to the Formula One points system, giving more weight to winners and only rewarding the top portion of the field.
Since 2003, NASCAR made change after change to emphasis winning races and with hindsight the driver who lost out on the changes being one year too late is Newman. No one came close to the numbers Newman put up in this season but this season should be put in context of his career as a whole.
While it is one strong season it is an outlier in Newman's career. In Newman's 18 full Cup seasons from 2002 to 2019 the only other season he won multiple races was 2004 when he won twice. From 2006 through last season, Newman had six victories and eight winless seasons. Ironically, the only time Newman has finished in the top five of the championship in his career was 2014, the first year of current playoff format. That year Newman was runner-up with no victories, five top five finishes and 16 top ten finishes. Since 2006, he finished outside the top ten in the championship in 11 of 14 seasons.
Kenseth never won another championship but he had a few close calls. He was runner-up in 2006 and 2013, both times to Johnson. In those seasons he won four races and seven races respectively. Along with those runner-up results, he had four other top five championship finishes and in his final 14 full seasons he finished in the top ten of the championship 11 times. One of the years he wasn't in the top ten was 2015, when he had five victories but was suspended for two races for intentionally taking out Joey Logano at Martinsville.
Whenever the NASCAR season resumes, which could be in under a month, both Newman and Kenseth aim to be on the track. Both are in the twilight of their careers. Kenseth has already comeback from retirement once to run nearly half a season for Roush Fenway Racing in 2018. He sat out all of 2019. Now he looks to tackle possible 32 races at 48 years old. Newman alone being fully functional is remarkable considering his accident at Daytona. Returning to competition three months later is staggering.
Neither should have high expectations. Newman is returning from injury and history suggests he will not be a contender. Kenseth is with a team capable of winning races but he has been out of a Cup car since the 2018 Homestead finale and has no experience in the high downforce package introduced last season.
Though it may be nice to see both drivers back on track both could fade into the pack.
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