Jimmie Johnson on ABC

Here is a copy of my last post for 4wide.com

Folks, let’s try and understand what happened this Sunday at Texas. On lap 3, David Reutimann hits Sam Hornish Jr who (big surprise) loses control and clips Jimmie Johnson and sends him into the wall. Now, for the rest of the broadcast, this is all the folks at ESPN talked about… Now, I’ll agree that this is quite a turn of events but do we have to hear it over and over again every 10 mins? This is no longer NASCAR on ABC but the Jimmie Johnson show featuring the rest of NASCAR on ABC.

In any case, at this point I’m thinking, “YES! This is what I’ve been waiting for. Now Gordon and Martin can make up some ground and be right back in the chase! Ok, really I was hoping for Gordon to get back into it, especially since he was in the front at this point… well, as history would have it, once again, the 24 team had a complete meltdown and were only able to salvage a top 15. What could have been so drastically off that they would win the pole yet couldn’t keep up with the track? This is the team that is known for being one of the best at keeping up with changing track conditions, yet as the day went on, Gordon fell further and further back. Mark Martin on the other hand had a great finish coming home with a 4th place. If Jimmie has any issues at all in the next 2 races, misses a setup, gets caught up in someone else’s mess, drops a lug-nut, gets a penalty for speeding on pit road, anything really, and Mark is right there to rip that “history making” moment out of JJ’s hands and possibly win his first, well deserved championship. Wouldn’t that be a sight?

One thing that I also had a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around was the fact that the crews of the 24 AND the 5 were helping the 48 team put their car back together. I mean, I understand they are all one team, but isn’t this a bit of a conflict of interest? Why weren’t the 24 guys out trying to make the 24 better while it was falling back? I don’t want to start any rumors or sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it’s a funny coincidence that the day Jimmie is in trouble, Jeff can’t get it going…

Kurt Busch is the man. After having lots of ups and downs in his career, not much unlike his little brother, Kurt seems to be getting his stuff back together. Kurt and Kyle dominated the race on Sunday and anyone that says that it didn’t take skill to stay and front yet conserve enough gas to finish the race wasn’t watching the race. And if I’m not mistaken, everyone actually finished a lap down as Kurt was the only one to not pit at the end of the race (please correct me if I’m wrong). All in all, that was a great job by Kurt and the whole 2 team.

To get back to Sam Hornish Jr, I hope I didn’t piss off anyone with my comment above. To be fair, he did get run into and the crash was not his fault… well the first one anyway. Sam seems to have issues keeping him car off the walls and in one piece. It would be an interesting stat to find out how many actual race cars he’s destroyed this year. I don’t have anything against him personally. That being said, you would think that he would start showing some signs of improvement out there. Instead, it just seems like all we hear every week is “Hornish spins out in turn 2!”

Now I was watching Dave Despain last night. I love Dave. I love his no holds barred yet always logical views of what is happening in motorsports. As always, it seems that the one thing on most people’s mind is how they don’t like the chase format.. if at all. Personally, I think I haven’t hidden the fact that I think the chase needs some tweaks… ok, maybe some major changes, but I do think that a play-off system is great. How you make the play-offs and how it’s executed could use some overhauling. Here is how I think this should work.

1 - More points need to be given to race winners.

It’s no secret that most people think that race winners should be in the chase. Others say that you also need consistency. Ok, so let’s compromise. Give the race winners an extra 20 points for the win. That way you would see race winners going to the top of the standings.

2 - No more bonus points.

Ok, some people may be confused here. Right now, if you win a race, you get 10 bonus points for every win, ONCE THE CHASE STARTS. I have no clue what so ever how NASCAR came up with this. When they decided to change the chase, the problem was that you had guys like Kasey Khane, who had 6 wins that year, would have not made the chase would he have come in 1 position back in the last race. Well, this system wouldn’t have helped him anyway! Look at Mark Martin, he started the chase in the lead but almost didn’t make the chase to begin with. How does this make any sense?

3 - Regular season points leader should start the chase on top.

To me, this is very important. When Tony Stewart won the regular season this year, he should have automatically started the chase in the lead. What’s the point of trying your hardest all season long if you’re not gaining anything from finishing first? In every other sport, the team that wins the regular season gets home field advantage. Well since there is no home field in NASCAR, this only makes sense.

4 - Position chasers by points as it was originally.

So when the chase started, the chasers would all be in the same position they finished the regular season but straddled 5 points for every position down. So for example, the first place and regular season winner would have 5050, second place would have 5045, third 5040 and so on. If we remember the fact that race winners are getting more points as my first point (1- More points need to be given to race winners.) then we know that the race winners are being taken care of already and should be near the top anyway.

5 - Have the chasers run their own point system.

Ok, so this is something someone suggested which I think could work out nicely, but may alienate the rest of the field. Here’s how it goes, have the chaser point respective to each other, not the whole field. Here’s an example. We are at Texas and we have a chaser finish in 12th position and the next chaser only finishes in 20th. Well there will be a huge difference in the points earned. A 35 point difference if my math is right. This suggestion says that because the chasers are racing a race within the race, there should only be a 5 point difference between the finishes. So you have the overall finish, but the chase points are given depending on where you finish relative to the other chaser. Again, I am a bit unsure of this but would be interesting to investigate this more.

So all in all, what I’m saying is bring the chase back to what it was originally, but give more points to the race winners… on the spot… not when the chase “resets”. Let me know what you all think in the comments below. If you have other ideas on how the chase should be, don’t hesitate to post it.