Chase is on to drive up interest
In new format, NASCAR hopes that more is better
RICHMOND - When the Chase for the Nextel Cup was implemented in 2004, it was the intent of NASCAR officials to inject some excitement into what had been a lackluster championship run by Matt Kenseth the previous year.
Kenseth turned the last title of NASCAR's Winston Cup era into a runaway after he finished with one win, 11 top fives, and a series-high 25 top 10s, clinching the title by 90 points over runner-up Jimmie Johnson with a fourth-place finish at Rockingham, N.C., in the season's penultimate event.
The yawns were deafening.
Worse for NASCAR - which kicks off its season with its biggest event, the Daytona 500, instead of saving it for the end - interest in auto racing seemed to wane once it came time for the National Football League to kick off and the pennant races in Major League Baseball to heat up.
So in an attempt to involve more drivers, intensify fan interest, and stoke season-ending competition, NASCAR officials adopted a 10-race playoff format, to be contested among those drivers who ranked in the top 10 in points after the first 26 events of the 36-race season. The points leader would start the Chase with 5,050 points, with the remaining nine drivers ranked in declining 5-point increments, and the driver with the most points at the end of the 10 Chase races crowned champion.
"I've been critical of the Chase getting started," said Johnson, who nevertheless wound up winning his first Nextel Cup title last year after coming up short against inaugural Chase champion Kurt Busch in 2004 by a scant 8 points.
When this year's Chase gets under way Sunday with the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway, Johnson, driver of the No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet, will attempt to become the first repeat NASCAR champion since his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Jeff Gordon, in 1997-98.
But if Johnson is to do so, it will be under a different Chase format. At the beginning of the season, NASCAR officials tweaked the Chase by: expanding the field to 12 drivers; eliminating the eligibility of those drivers who were outside the top 10 but still within 400 points of the leader after 26 races; resetting the point totals for the 12 Chasers with 10-point bonuses for each victory; and seeding the Chase field based upon the adjusted point standings.
As a result, Johnson, winner of six regular-season races, including the last two at Fontana, Calif., and Richmond, will be the top seed and start with a 20-point lead over Gordon (5,060-5,040), a four-time winner during the regular season whose 317-point lead entering the final race at Richmond was wiped away by the seeding.
"I knew even though I wasn't in love with the Chase getting started, I knew someday I was going to be in that position where the Chase would help me and give me a chance for the championship," Johnson said. "And this year has been that way. We were pretty far back [in sixth place, 430 points behind Gordon]. We've got a lot of speed and the Chase is working out to help us and give us a berth for the championship."
Asked if he had any initial misgivings when the changes in the format were announced in January, Gordon said, "Yeah, my biggest [question] was, 'Why? Why now?' " This after Gordon, along with Dale Earnhardt Jr., failed to make the 10-man cut in 2005, the year Tony Stewart won his second NASCAR title. Last year, Stewart failed to make the cut.
"The first three years when we created the Chase, we said let's give this format a chance for 2-3 years," said NASCAR president Mike Helton, explaining the reason for the tweaks. "We decided to put a three-year term on it and then follow it and see what it looked like.
"As we followed up on the third year, the one thing we realized, that because of the depth and all the quality we had in all three of those categories, maybe a couple of extra spots would be a good thing."
It certainly proved beneficial for Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick, who finished 11th and 12th in the points after 26 races.
Harvick, who won the Daytona 500 in February in a stirring drag race over Mark Martin by 0.02 seconds and then captured the $1 million Nextel All-Star race at Lowe's Motor Speedway in May, had even more drama in staving off Earnhardt for the 12th spot.
"You know, this isn't near as exciting as winning the Daytona 500, I can promise you that," said Harvick, who finished seventh in Saturday's Chevy Rock & Roll 400 after starting the night needing to finish 32d or better to shut out Earnhardt. "To get into the Chase is what we needed to do, and I feel like we've had good racecars quite a few times and got torn up or just had something crazy happen.
"So, you know, it's hard to complain after we won the Daytona 500, we won the All-Star race, and now we've made the Chase."
Busch had every reason to gripe in June when he plummeted eight spots in the points to 17th when NASCAR hit him with a 100-point deduction for a pit-road incident involving Stewart and one of his crew members in a race at Dover, Del. But Busch rallied to clinch the 10th spot in the field, winning two races and averaging 140.25 points in the 12 races following his penalty.
While he wasn't one to complain, Busch suggested that it would have been just as exciting with a 10-man field. He said there would have been just as much intensity if he, Truex, and Harvick, who were separated by 33 points in their battle for the ninth, 10th, and 11th spots, were left to jockey for the 10th and last spot under last year's format.
"If it was just the 10 again, it would've been the most exciting opportunity for the Race to the Chase to really show itself," said Busch, who wound up earning the No. 5 seed in the Chase. "It really would have been exciting to see who was going to get in and get out. It would have changed every lap with positions out on the track.
"This year there are 12 guys . . . but it sure would have been interesting to see if there was only 10 of us." 