What NASCAR needs: A new points system
Points. They're the lifeblood of sports.
A run is 1 point. (Technically, it's one run, but bear with me here.) A touchdown is 7 (when you include the extra point.) A goal is one in pretty much every sport you play. A field goal is two (in basketball, unless it's three) or three (in the American variety of football, which rules all).
Points tend to come in small, even (or prime) numbers.
And then there's NASCAR.
If you win a race, you get 190 points. If you finish dead last, you get 34 points.
Who the heck gets 34 points for doing anything? And why is the even (but not small or prime or memorable) 190 points the top end of anything?
Then there are bonus points.
* NASCAR drivers get 5 points for leading a lap.
* They get 5 more points for leading the most laps.
So if you win the race, lead a lap (duh) and lead the most laps, you go home with ... 195 points. Again, that number is not small or prime. Nor is it even.
So:
* Travis Kvapil and Jeremy Mayfield should not get points toward a championship just because they don't stop for gas and tires like everyone else.
* Every driver has plenty of motivation to get his butt to the front of the field. You can't win if there's a car in front of you. Your sponsors aren't paying you to run 33rd. And the view's better up front.
* No one cares if you lead the most laps. It's not like the Cardinals get credit for being up by three points after 57 minutes and 2 seconds in the Super Bowl. Who cares?
F1 and Indy Car have it right. The winner of an F1 races gets a nice even 10 points. The IndyCar winner gets 50.
But F1 does it one better. It goes 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1. Assuming there are more than 8 cars in the field (and there usually are, unless they're racing at Indy), the guy who finishes ninth gets nothing. 10th? Zip. 11th? Zero.
In other words: If you've got nothing, you get nothing. And anything worse than, say, 25th in a 43-car field, is nothing. (25, you see, is the recurring theme here.)
In still other words: Michael Waltrip finished last season with 2,889 points. Man, that's a lot! But Waltrip finished worse than 25th in 23 of 36 races last year. That's terrible!
And that's my point.
Here's what I suggest:
* Winner gets 100. That's a nice round number.
* Losers (26th or worse) get nothing. That'll stop guys from running around the track with half a car at half speed in hopes of climbing up to 37th place.
* You get nothing for leading a lap or leading the most laps.
Check this out:
1st place-100 points
2nd-90
3rd-80
4th-70
5th-60
6th-55
7th-50
8th-45
9th-40
10th-35
11th-30
12th-27
13th-24
14th-21
15th-18
16th-15
17th-12
18th-10
19th-8
20th-6
21th-5
22th-4
23th-3
24th-2
25th-1
I have no idea if this will produce closer season finishes. I just want something that's, you know, sane.
Comments (1)
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Again with the 25's. Maybe you could get the Heels to be ranked 25th.
Posted on February 6, 2009 9:23 PM