It's the points, not the Chase in need of fixing

I am sitting here in the closet they call a media center at Phoenix International Raceway, four hours before the start of today’s Checker Auto Parts 500, shaking my head.
A racing writer’s daily ritual, whether they admit this or not, is to check the various racing web sites to see what everyone else is writing about. A NASCAR reporter who tells you he or she doesn’t check jayski.com, for instance, is just a liar.
As has been the case for the past couple of weeks, today’s digest of stories on Jay’s site includes a load of people complaining about how the Chase for the Nextel Cup is flawed because Tony Stewart is winning races but isn’t in the Chase.
I had to be at the track here at 7 a.m. local time to be on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” show to discuss the same topic. In fairness to the ESPN folks, especially reporter Mike Massaro’s piece around which the discussion was built, they at least accurately explored the various sides of the matter.
On the show, I tried to make the point that the real problem people seem to have with the way NASCAR picks a champion has next to nothing to do with the Chase format itself. The flaw is, as it has always been, with the points system itself.
Stewart has won three of the past six races but, because he did not make the Chase cut after 26 races, he can’t win the championship. But if there were no Chase, Stewart would have been mathematically eliminated from championship contention DESPITE the fact he won at Texas last weekend and would have been practically eliminated weeks earlier.
The Chase hasn’t changed that a bit. What the Chase has done is make more people more relevant for more weeks in the championship discussion. Under the old format, by Labor Day the title race usually had been winnowed down to three or four teams, and it was only on rare occasions that more than two teams were really part of the discussion in the season’s final weeks.
The Chase keeps 12 to 15 teams, at least, in the picture until the end of September and keeps at least a handful of racers in contention until after Halloween. There could, and most likely will, soon come a year when a driver in the Chase has the kind of fall Stewart is having and wraps things up before we go to Homestead. But unless something very odd happens here this afternoon, the Chase is going to be three-for-three in doing what it was designed to do, and that’s carry the championship battle into the season’s final week.
The argument that drivers who win multiple races should fare better in the points standings is every bit as valid now as it was under the old system. But again, that’s not a Chase issue. It’s a points issue. And until the way points are tabulated is changed, the Chase is going to feel the effects of that issue.
First place should be significantly more rewarding than second place, and the gap between those two positions should be wider than the gap between any other in the finishing order. Make winning races more important toward winning championships and the racers in the sport will adapt to that system, Chase or no Chase.
There’s no question that Stewart’s team is one of the best in NASCAR. That’s never been an issue. But that team had 26 changes to make the Chase this year, and it failed.
It’s like a golfer playing in a major championship. If he shoots 86 on the first day, he can shoot 66 on the second day and still miss the cut.
The difference in NASCAR, of course, is that the teams that don’t make the “cut” still get to play in the later rounds. The analogy may not be perfect, but the fact remains that a golfer’s bad shots count just as much as his good ones do, and that’s how it is – and ought to be – in racing as well.
There was a movie several years about starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore called “Disclosure,” based on a Michael Crichton book. Douglas’s character is basically set up to take the fall for a failure with his company’s latest major project, and an anonymous tipster keeps advising him not to worry so much about what’s happening to him and to instead spend his time and energy on fixing the problem that’s at the root of everything to start with.
“Solve the problem,” is the message Douglas keeps getting from his anonymous source. That’s a good message for NASCAR, too. The problem is not the Chase, it’s the points. Solve that, and the Chase will take care of itself.