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IT'S ALL ABOUT WINNING >> NASCAR'S NEW POINTS SYSTEM IS DESIGNED TO ENCOURAGE DRIVERS TO CHASE THE CHECKERED FLAG

February 15, 2007 12:50 am

In the days before television turned NASCAR drivers into multimillion-dollar conglomerates, second place was merely the first loser.

Richard Petty sure thought so. "The King" won an amazing 27 times in 49 starts during the 1967 season and finished his Hall of Fame career with a record 200 victories.

The late Dale Earnhardt earned his reputation as "The Intimidator" with his cold-blooded willingness to do whatever it took to win races.

Cale Yarborough wanted to win so badly, he fought both Donnie and Bobby Allison after he and Donnie wrecked while racing for the lead late in the 1979 Daytona 500.

The bare-knuckle ending to that race, the first NASCAR event televised in its entirety, still is widely credited with helping to spark the explosive growth American stock-car racing enjoyed in the 1980s and '90s.

And it's that kind of passion, the unquenchable thirst for victory, that Brian France believes will launch NASCAR into another period of remarkable prosperity.

"Winning is what this sport is all about," France said, and he ought to know.

The grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. is 44 years old, easily old enough to remember the days when a driver gladly would've knocked his grandmother into the wall if it meant beating her to the checkered flag.

NASCAR lost much of that edge during its evolution into a mainstream sport. Other than a few remaining "old school" holdovers, most of today's racers are walking, talking billboards, spit-shined and careful not to say or do anything to offend their big-money sponsors.

Last season, at least, reaction to NASCAR's product was lukewarm at best. Both television ratings and track attendance lagged--the result, as more than one media analyst noted, of the sport hitting a natural plateau after more than a decade of expansion.

France, who believes if you're not moving forward you're losing ground, wasn't about to sit idly by and watch NASCAR's gains slip through his fingers. So just three years after he went out on a limb by implementing the 10-race "Chase for the Championship," France decided it was time to tweak the system.

"I don't like and no one likes when a driver gets out of their car and says, 'I'm happy to have had an eighth-place finish,'" France said recently. "No one in NASCAR thinks that's a neat thing to hear. On the other hand, there are 43 teams that compete on the same field at the same time and we only have one winner. So when you went eighth, you beat 35 other drivers on a given weekend. Obviously our sport is different.

"With that in mind, we want to make sure that the balance is right. In our view, the balance is slightly not where we want it to be. We want to enhance and emphasize winning even more."

Beginning this season, victories during the 26-race Nextel Cup regular season will be worth 185 points--five more than last year. If the winning driver also earns five bonus points for leading a lap and five more for leading the most laps, he'll finish with 25 more points than the second-place driver.

It might not seem like much of a change, but those points add up over the course of a season. With so much emphasis placed on the 10 Chase races, the hope is that by increasing the incentive to win, the first 26 races will take on even greater significance.

Count Matt Kenseth among those who aren't so sure.

"I've said all along with more points to the winner, I don't think it's gonna change the winners of the races," he said. "I think you approach them all the same. We all go out to try and win races. We've run second at Indy a couple of times and it could have paid a 2,000-point bonus to win that race and we still couldn't have won it."

Many consider Kenseth's 2003 Cup championship the biggest reason why NASCAR adopted the Chase format in the first place. The Wisconsin native won just one race that year, but had 25 top-10 finishes and beat runner-up Jimmie Johnson by 90 points.

Ryan Newman, who led the series with eight victories that year, wound up sixth in the final standings. He finished 311 points behind Kenseth, sparking an outcry from fans and the media that NASCAR had gone too far in an effort to reward consistency.

Now, victories will be worth 10 bonus points that will be used to seed the drivers once the Chase begins.

During the Chase's first three years, the 10 qualifying drivers' point totals were reset in 5-point increments when the postseason began. The 10th-place driver started the Chase with 5,005 points, ninth place with 5,010, and so on.

Under the new system, the 10 Chase drivers' points will still be reset to 5,000, then NASCAR will add 10 points for each regular season victory.

Last season, this new format would have drastically helped Kasey Kahne, who won a series-high five races but barely made the Chase and started it in 10th place, 50 points behind Kenseth. With the new system, he would have earned 50 points for his five wins and started the Chase in first place.

"I think that if they truly want the people who win the most races, if they want that to be reflected in the final points rundown, then this is a step towards that," Carl Edwards said.

Easily the most controversial aspect of NASCAR's "adjustments" was the decision to expand the Chase field from 10 drivers to 12.

From the moment such a move was first discussed last year, NASCAR's critics claimed it was a transparent attempt to make sure the sport's megastars weren't left on the outside once the postseason started. They pointed out how both Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon failed to qualify for the Chase in 2005, and their argument took on additional weight when defending Cup champion Tony Stewart missed the Chase last season.

France defended the move by noting the depth of quality teams in the Nextel Cup ranks. He also pointed out that there was always a possibility of more than 10 teams qualifying for the Chase by finishing within 400 points of the leader, a loophole that has been eliminated under the new system.

Jeff Burton wasn't convinced expansion was the proper move until a conversation with his wife last August. She pointed out that mathematically, it was easier to make the playoffs in pro baseball, football, basketball and hockey than it is in NASCAR--where barely 20 percent of the full-time drivers qualify for the postseason.

"From that standpoint, having more teams is a positive thing," Burton said. "To go back in history, when the [NFL] wild card thing started, there were a lot of opponents to that. Traditionalists have said that's not right and you should have to be one of the best four or eight teams or whatever it was. The wild card thing is creating a scenario that's not traditional. But at the end of the day, what's right for the sport is whatever is right to make it as interesting as possible.

"I don't know what that number is, but I do have an understanding and I do believe that compared to hockey and basketball and football and baseball, this is the hardest sport on a weekly basis and the hardest sport to get yourself into the playoffs."

As more than one driver has noted, it's still going to be no picnic trying to beat out more than 30 other fully funded and highly motivated teams.

"I think 16 or 17 teams are capable of being a Chase contender," Scott Riggs said. "Even with those 12 spots, I think someone who was in that top 10 last year won't be in the top 12. It's just too competitive."

Jim McConnell: 540/374-
Email: 5444jmcconnell@freelancestar.com