This was a quiet weekend in what has otherwise been a noisy and chaotic year. Off-track, Chip Ganassi Racing confirmed its return to sports car racing. NASCAR is allowing 60% of the field into the Clash. The Trucks will be trading Eldora for Knoxville. The Macau Grand Prix happened this weekend with a mostly local crowd, but Rob Huff was still there, and Rob Huff does what Rob Huff does, however, a post-race penalty kept him from having a perfect weekend. MotoGP ended its season in Portugal. Lewis Hamilton will be knighted. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
It's Time for NASCAR to Dump Points
Two weeks removed from another marathon NASCAR season concluding, there are a few thoughts floating around.
The current system leaves a lot of room to be dissatisfied. A driver can be great for 34 weeks and then have one down performance and be out of it. There are always the defensive arguments that in past systems a driver could be great and not win the championship or win the most races and not be champion, but those seasons were different. There were no resets. NASCAR didn't bring the pack back together.
If a driver came out on top it was because he had a better 29-race or 30-race or 31-race season than his fellow competitors. That driver might not have won the most races, but the results from two-dozen plus races were better than the rest. The bad days didn't counterbalance the good days. While a rival driver may have taken more trips to victory lane, he might have had just as many finishes outside the top 25.
Now, if you win a race, you're good until the final ten races. One of 16 playoff spots will be reserved for that driver as long as he is in the top 30 in the championship, which is very easy to maintain. Once in the playoffs, then you have to put together one solid three-race stretches after another. The bar has been lowered. Strategically, a driver who is over 400 points behind the championship leader after 26 races can be champion without having to overcome a 400-point deficit. The system does 90% of the work.
This year, we had Chase Elliott win the championship, but everyone had just seen Kevin Harvick win nine races and lead the champion for 30 of the first 34 races. Harvick broke 20 top five finishes, something no other driver did, and had over 25 top ten finishes, something no other driver did. Harvick completed 9,911 of 9,914 laps. It was an outstanding season. It will go down in the record book as the fifth best for 2020, however it will be difficult to name four seasons that were better.
Prior to his stunning elimination at Martinsville, Harvick had not been lower than third in the championship at any point over the first 34 races. He was technically third in the standings after Martinsville, but because Joey Logano won at Kansas and Elliott won at Martinsville, those two drivers took two championship spots. The other two went to Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski in first and second of points at the end of the semifinal round.
It isn't so much Harvick dropped because everyone else was better, but a case where a few drivers were better at the right time. Harvick had two stretches where he did not finish in the top ten in consecutive races: Martinsville and Homestead in June and Texas and Martinsville in the semifinal round.
Now, Harvick ended up 17th at Martinsville going for broke to get around Kyle Busch for ninth and spun out, but a stretch of second, 16th and tenth for a driver with nine victories you would think be enough, and it wasn't.
People were dissatisfied after Martinsville. Harvick didn't do anything wrong all season. His bad days were no worse than the bad days of any of the four finalists. Harvick had one finish outside the top twenty, a 26th at Homestead. Elliott and Logano each had eight finishes outside the top twenty. Keselowski had three. Hamlin had four.
The totals did not matter, but the timing of the results did, and that remains a difficult adjustment to make.
NASCAR has fully dived into this format. It is not going back to previous formats even though nothing suggests the current system is keeping people's attention or drawing in more viewers.
However, if NASCAR wants to embrace this, it has to fully embrace it and it has to dump the points system.
As long as NASCAR has a points system and officially keeps track of points standings, we will always have something to discredit the system that NASCAR uses to determine its champion. With a points system, we will always have a 36-race sample size either confirming or dismissing the champion NASCAR has crowned.
If NASCAR wants winning to matter, then have only winning matter. You can still use a playoff format and structure it where playoff victories advance a driver, but it would just make winning over the course of the season more important.
Let's use this year as an example.
All the race winners still make the playoffs, easy enough, but that is only 11 drivers and there are 16 playoff spots. Fill those up with drivers who finish second. Can't win a race? At least finish second then, and it would shake up who gets those final five spots.
Kyle Busch was the notable driver without a victory through 26 races, but he ended up with three runner-up finishes and would have been fine. That would have left four spots open and there were five other drivers with a runner-up finish in the regular season that did not have a victory.
Like any other tiebreaker, we will take third-place finishes and fourth-place finishes and so on to break that tie.
Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. would get a spot because he was runner-up at Talladega and third at Las Vegas and fourth in the 500-kilometer Charlotte race. Matt DiBenedetto would still get a spot after he was second at Las Vegas and third at Kentucky. Tyler Reddick would be in, as he was second at Texas and fourth at Homestead. The final spot would go to Clint Bowyer, as he was second at Bristol and fifth at Phoenix.
The odd man out? Matt Kenseth. His only top five finish was second in the Brickyard 400.
With Stenhouse, Jr. and Reddick making it, Aric Almirola and Kurt Busch would be on the outside. In the first 26 races, the best Almirola finished was third on three occasions. Busch had two third-place finishes. Both would miss out. Talk about every position mattering.
How would the playoffs work?
The three winners from each round advance and then the remaining spots are filled with the drivers with the most victories over the course of the season. That is a large security blanket for those who won races over the first 26 races and it would great incentivize winning races and not letting one or two drivers run away from the field, like we saw with Harvick and Hamlin this year. What if there are more available spots than winners remaining? Just as we filled the spots for the playoffs, take the driver with the best finish from that round.
After round one, Harvick took two victories, increasing his insurance and Keselowski also added a victory to his total. They advance. All the other race winners from the regular season advance because there were only 11 race winners and 12 spots in the second round. That 12th spot would go to Kyle Busch because he finished second at Bristol.
In round two, Hamlin and Elliott won races and Kurt Busch's victory now means nothing because he wasn't in the playoffs. Harvick and Keselowski were set with nine and four victories respectively. Logano would be set on two victories, but that would account for five spots, three would be left and there would be six drivers with one victory.
Round two results break the tie. Martin Truex, Jr. and William Byron both had fourth-place finishes in the round, so they take two spots. Austin Dillon would be out, as his best finish was 12th and Cole Custer's best finish was ninth.
The final spot in the semifinal round would be between Ryan Blaney and Alex Bowman. Both drivers had a fifth-place finish in the round, but Blaney's next best result was seventh while Bowman's was 14th. Blaney advances.
In this format, there would be the likelihood one driver would have a final four spot clinched before the semifinal round even began, and that would have been the case in 2020. Harvick had nine victories. No one could surpass him. He would clinch a spot in Phoenix and the final three spots would come down to the race winners. Once Kyle Busch won at Texas, Hamlin would have clinched a spot because there would only be two race winners in that round.
It might sound anti-climactic having three of four spots determined before Martinsville, but there would still be five drivers going into the penultimate race knowing a victory secures a championship spot in Phoenix, and the two drivers that combined to win nearly half the races would be guaranteed a shot for the championship.
The drama would still exist at Martinsville and the best drivers over the course of the season would clinch a shot at the title. It is arguably NASCAR having its cake and eating it as well.
All that would have changed in a victories-only format in 2020 would be Harvick making it to Phoenix and Keselowski ending up on the outside. Harvick might not have won the championship over Elliott if he made the final four in the Phoenix race, but it would have felt more fitting if Harvick at least had a shot. He did all he could over 35 races, won nine times and the least he deserved was an opportunity. If Phoenix didn't play out in his favor, oh well, but at least the opportunity would have been there for Harvick. That didn't happen this year despite everything pointing to Harvick being more deserving than any other driver.
Would people hate the elimination of points? Absolutely, but the points don't matter. NASCAR doesn't want the points to matter. Instead of creating playoff points and stage points, it should just focus on victories. Just push victories. Stop making a 12th-place finish matter. Stop acting like a driver salvaged a seventh-place finish when he should have been 15th. Drop stage points, drop playoff points, the only thing to sell is winning the race. It doesn't get easier than that.
After 15 years of NASCAR changing and tinkering and turning the championship into a three-ring circus, let's cut the bullshit. Make winning the only thing that matters and truly reward the drivers that are best over the entire season.
Champions From the Weekend
Enea Bastianini clinched the Moto2 championship with a fifth-place finish at Portimão.
Albert Arenas clinched the Moto3 championship with a 12th-place finish at Portimão.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Enea Bastianini and Albert Arenas, but did you know...
Miguel Oliveira won his home race, MotoGP's Portuguese Grand Prix, his second victory of the season. Remy Gardner won the Moto2 race, his first career victory. Raúl Fernández won the Moto3 race, his second victory of the season.
Hon Chio Leong won the Macau Grand Prix. Leong is the first Macau driver to win the Macau Grand Prix since André Couto in 2000. This year's race was a part of the China Formula 4 Championship. Leong also won the qualifying race.
Rob Huff and Jason Zhang split the Guia Races from Macau. Huff was first on the road in the second race but was penalized 30 seconds for causing an accident with Ma Qing Hua. Huff does have ten Macau victories after his triumph in race one. These races were a part of the TCR China Touring Car Championship this year.
Coming Up This Weekend
Formula One runs the Bahrain Grand Prix about eight months behind schedule.
Super GT concludes its 2020 season at Fuji.
