NASCAR is replacing the complicated scoring system it has used since 1975 with a more straightforward format.
None of the changes for the 2011 season announced by chairman Brian France at the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Wednesday came as much of a surprise. NASCAR officials had been briefing teams for almost two weeks on the changes in an effort to give competitors feedback on the direction being taken.
A race winner will receive 43 points under the new system, and the points will decrease down to 1 for the 43rd-place driver. There will be three bonus points for the winner, one bonus point for every driver who leads a lap, and one bonus point to the driver that leads the most laps.
The maximum points available now will be 48. Detroit Free Press
While winning has about the same benefits in the regular season, if a driver wants to get into the Chase, winning becomes very important indeed.
“When a driver is down by 10 points, he needs to pass 11 cars to take the lead in the standings,” France said. “It’s much more simplified.”
Under the old system, the winner received 185 points, the second-place finisher received 170 points, and so on down in a non-linear fashion. Drivers received five points each for leading a lap and for leading the most laps; thus, in effect, five points for winning the race. (Race winners who made the Chase would receive a 10-point bonus within the Chase.)
Percentage-wise, the differential between the systems is virtually nonexistent. If, say, the winner received 47 points (43 + 3 + 1), the second-place finisher (without leading any laps) would have about 89.36 percent of the winner’s total. Under the old system, the winner received 190 points (185 + 10), while the second-place finisher (without leading any laps) had 89.47 percent of the winner’s total. In other words, there’s no real new advantage to winning in the points structure, no matter what NASCAR says.
However, what the new system can do is penalize a driver sharply for having, say, an early-race engine failure or wreck. Making up ground will be difficult ... which is where the new Chase qualification system comes into play. Yahoo! Sports
The new points system will govern NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Nationwide Series and Camping World Truck Series, as well as regional series.
This system will go into effect at Daytona and will also be used by the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series.
There wild be a wild card provision in 2011 where the top 10 drivers in the points standings will qualify for the Chase, as well as two drivers in the top 20 in points who have scored the most victories in the first 26 races.
The top 10 drivers in points each will start the Chase with 2,000 points plus three bonus points for each race win. The wild cards will receive no bonus points and will start with a base of 2,000 points. Toronto Sun
Joined by all the top NASCAR leadership, France stressed that the sanctioning body is doing what all major sporting leagues are doing in evaluating and tweaking their rules and formats to stay relevant, interesting and competitive.
Added NASCAR president Mike Helton, “Everything we’ve got is a moving target. It always has been.
“We’re always going to look at stuff that we think in our opinion, based on the input we get and the knowledge we’ve got, and he experience we’ve got, we’re going to make adaptations to it so we make the sport better.”
Two-time NASCAR Cup champ Tony Stewart was in the audience and said afterward that he was completely satisfied with the new formats and procedures.
“They get suggestions from everybody, but the good things is they don’t just go and make knee-jerk reactions, they go in there calculated,’’ said Stewart, owner-driver of the No. 14 Office Depot-Mobil 1 Chevrolet. “The great thing is they are smarter than all of us standing here right now because they are able to look at it from a lot of different perspectives.
“It’s very easy to get tunnel vision on a topic and think we’re 100 percent right on it, when there’s something they always think of. ... The longer I’ve gone here, the more comfortable and appreciative I am with the leadership here that they don’t make calls just to have a reaction. They think it through before they react.’’ San Francisco Chronicle
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