NASCAR: Loudon Preview

Image by The Pit Zone via Flickr

NASCAR travels to New Hampshire for a two-race weekend.  The big race is Sunday's Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.  It's the first race of the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship, twelve drivers vying for the championship separated by just forty points.

I'm not a big fan of the Chase.  I like the old system where a driver had to be consistent over the entire season to win the championship.  Now, a driver just has to be consistent enough over the regular season, the first 26 races, to be in the Top 12 and make the Chase.  The Chase is a playoff format; the points of the 12 Chase drivers are reset and they begin the playoffs on an almost equal footing.  The winner of the Sprint Cup champion is the best of the 12 over the final ten races of the season.  Big leads are almost always erased.  Last season, Jimmie Johnson took home the championship that should have belonged to Jeff Gordon.  Now, I'm not a Jeff Gordon fan so that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I am a Tony Stewart fan and this year eleven other drivers are vying to take home his championship.  He had a 197-point lead after Richmond, but starts this Chase ten points behind Mark Martin.  NASCAR got tired of drivers running away with championships, clinching them with races left on the schedule, and came up with this playoff format.

I also don't like the scoring system for the Chase.  It's the same as any other time of the season, but twelve drivers are competing for the championship alongside 31 other drivers who have their own reasons for being there.  Shouldn't the Chase drivers be scored separately from the other drivers?