The MotoGP championship might have swung in one direction. There were last lap passes and a photo finish at Aragón. Kevin Harvick and Austin Dillon are back at it. IMSA had late battles for all three class victories at Laguna Seca and it even included a gutsy pass into the corkscrew. Two of the three European Le Mans Series class championships are on the verge of being settled but we did see a 20-point gap erased last year in the ELMS season finale so it isn't over yet. A Frenchman who could be on the Formula One grid later this year is closing in on a championship in Japan. Here is a run down of what got me thinking.
Is It a Bad Thing If The Champion Doesn't Win a Race?
Going into this weekend, it appeared a driver who had not won a race all season could win the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters championship. However, with Mattias Ekström winning race one of the weekend at the Red Bull Ring, with some help from Audi teammates, it appears that will not be the case this year. But there was another winless championship leader entering Sunday in the IMSA GTD class with the #63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari of Christina Nielsen and Alessandro Balzan and they too picked up their first victory of the season at Laguna Seca. Despite these victories it did get me wondering if it would be a bad thing if a champion did not win a race all season.
I am not sure how many people would have a problem if a champion did not have a victory. To be honest, I never remember being concerned about how many race victories a champion had prior to NASCAR's implementing the Chase system prior to the 2004 season. Matt Kenseth won one race in 2003 and clinched the championship a race early while Ryan Newman won eight races that season and finished sixth in the championship. NASCAR tried for over a decade to get a system to incentivize winning races and then introduced the current system where Ryan Newman nearly won the championship won the title without winning a race and this year a driver could win the championship without winning a race.
We have lost sight of what it takes to win a championship. It isn't about winning the most races although that will likely help. It is about being the best driver over a collection of races whether that is 17 races, 18 races, 21 races or 36 races. Motorsports isn't as cut and dry as other sports. It isn't as simple as taking the driver with the most victories and giving them the crown. Most of the time the best lose more than he or she wins. Take Josef Newgarden this year in IndyCar. He won the championship and happened to win the most races with four victories but when you consider there are 17 races this season he won 23.5% of the team. For comparison, the worst team in Major League Baseball right now entering the final week of the season is the San Francisco Giants and its winning percentage is 39.1%.
In IndyCar's case those 13 other races should be factored into deciding the championship. Had Newgarden retired from the other 13 races whether it be because of accidents or mechanical failures, should those four victories have been enough to prop him up to be champion? Probably not.
This year IndyCar could have had its first champion with a single race victory for the first time in 20 years. Scott Dixon had one victory but he finished third in the championship off the back of seven podium finishes, ten top five finishes and 16 top ten finishes. Dixon had one bad race all year and it was completely out of his control after the damaged car of Jay Howard slid into his path exiting turn one in the Indianapolis 500. Then there was Simon Pagenaud, who won twice, half as much as Newgarden, but completed every lap this season, only the second driver to accomplish that feat. And Pagenaud didn't just ride around this year as he had six podium finishes, 13 top five finishes and 15 top ten finishes.
Any of those three and even Hélio Castroneves had seasons that were championship quality. Then you had Will Power who won three races, the second-most this season, but he finished fifth in the championship. Power is the best example of a potential flaw in having race victories being the sole criteria in deciding the champion. He had the second-most victories but he had seven finishes outside the top ten, four of which were finishes outside the top fifteen. Race victories should only be able to counterbalance the poor results to an extent and not completely erase them from the scoreboard.
I don't think it would have been a problem had Ekström won the DTM championship or Nielsen and Balzan won the GTD title without winning a race. Think about how rare winless champions are. They don't happen that often, close to never actually. We have had winless championships before, Tom Sneva, Scott Sharp, Oriol Servià, Austin Dillon to name a few and we will probably have a winless champion in a series in the future, possibly even this year in NASCAR.
When it happens we should not use it to define a series or think it is a problem and demand a change in a knee-jerk manner. It is a rare occurrence and there should be appreciation, not anger. Anger is a waste of time. Not all championships are won the same way. If someone does it without winning a race, more power to him or her.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Mattias Ekström, Christina Nielsen and Alessandro Balzan but did you know...
Marc Márquez won MotoGP's Aragón Grand Prix. Franco Morbidelli won the Moto2 race, his eighth victory of the season. Joan Mir won the Moto3 race, his eighth victory of the season.
Kyle Busch won the NASCAR Cup race from Loudon. Tyler Reddick won the Grand National Series race from Kentucky. Christopher Bell won the Truck race at Loudon.
The #90 VisitFlorida Racing Ligier-Gibson of Renger van der Zande and Marc Goossens won the IMSA race from Laguna Seca. The #24 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing BMW of John Edwards and Martin Tomczyk won in GTLM.
The #40 Graff Oreca of Richard Bradley, James Allen and Gustavo Yacamán won the European Le Mans Series race from Spa-Francorchamps. The #9 AT Racing Ligier of Alexander Talkanitsa, Sr., Alexander Talkanitsa, Jr., and Mikkel Jensen won in LMP3. The #51 Spirit of Race Ferrari of Andrea Bertolini, Gianluca Roda and Giogio Roda won in GTE.
Yuhi Sekiguchi won the Super Formula race from Sportsland SUGO with Pierre Gasly finishing second and Gasly is 0.5 points behind Hiroaki Ishiura for the championship lead with one round, a doubleheader at Suzuka, remaining in this year's season.
Coming Up This Weekend
Formula One heads to Malaysia for one final time.
NASCAR ends its first round of the Chase at Dover.
World Superbike has its penultimate round of the season at Magny-Cours.
The final Blancpain Endurance Series round will be at Barcelona.
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