By: DJ DeSpain

Congratulations to Jimmie Johnson, and the entire #48 team, for winning a fourth consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. This is an accomplishment that has never been done before in the 62-year history of NASCAR. Not to take anything from that feat, but did the Chase format give him an additional advantage?

Not really. If anything, the Chase format does more harm than good.

NASCAR set up the Chase format to tighten up the points system after Matt Kenseth’s championship win in 2003, which he won despite having only one race win during the season. The idea was to have more drivers involved in the chance to win the championship by resetting the points among the top 12 (originally 10) drivers after the 26^th race.

While NASCAR’s intent was to intensify the championship chase, in reality all it does is take away the reward for being consistent. No longer is a driver rewarded for being consistent throughout the year with multiple top-10 or top-5 finishes. Instead, the mindset now is that the first 26 races are merely a fancy form of track testing to set up 12 cars for the last 10 races.

The talk this year during race telecasts was the points race towards the end of the season was the closest it had been in awhile. That statement was only true among the top 3 drivers after Texas, but it required Johnson to wreck before that was able to happen!

Looking at the point systems comparison below, it can be shown that the old system was clearly closer than the Chase format.  By not performing a “do over” point reset, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart had a better chance of catching Johnson instead of Mark Martin. Going into Homestead, Stewart would have been 17 points behind Johnson in the old point systems format while Mark Martin had 108 points to catch Johnson in the Chase format.

Not only that, Kyle Busch would have finished the season in 9^th position while Brian Vickers drops down to 16^th, which would have been fair given Vicker’s lack of performance during the Chase.

Why would this be important? Sponsor dollars. By arbitrarily locking out teams from the top 12, it hurts the teams that perform well after the 26^th race because the media focuses more on the top 12 teams during the last 10 races. To prepare for 2010 during the off-season, Joe Gibbs Racing, would be able to get more sponsor money by being able to say that Kyle Busch was a top 10 car instead of a top 35 car.

Overall, the other NASCAR race series get by fine without a “do over” points system.  Johnson and his team would have won either way, but at least the old system was fairer to all participants.