NASCAR stage points are making the standings less close

Stage racing has been a hit so far in NASCAR, but it is having at least one negative side effect.

Unless you’re one of the most die-hard traditionalists around, you’d have to admit that stage racing has made earlier portions of Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races more interesting. The extra points given out at the end of stages also seem like fair compensation for drivers who run up front for big chunks of the race only to be bitten by bad luck down the stretch.

But it’s rare when even a beneficial rules change doesn’t have some kind of unintended consequence, and Nick Bromberg of Yahoo Sports has pointed one out in the From The Marbles blog. Stage points are quite possibly ruining the points race.

Granted, since we live in the playoff era, it’s not as much of a concern. If recent history has shown us everything, it’s that most of the playoff field will be made up of race winners, with only the last two or three spots likely to be determined by points.

Still, the stage points may make the race for those spots uneventful. That’s because Bromberg notes that the gaps between drivers in the standings are larger at this point in the season than they normally would be.

"While 23 drivers have scored stage points in 2017, eight drivers have finished in the top 10 in at least nine of the 14 stages that have awarded points so far. Since many of the same guys in the top 10 at the conclusion of stages every week it’s why the gaps between drivers are so large compared to a year ago.After race No. 7 in 2016, Kyle Busch had 259 points. 10th-place Austin Dillon was 61 points back and Ryan Blaney was 115 points behind Busch in 20th. This year, points leader Kyle Larson has 315 points. Kevin Harvick, the driver in 10th, is 117 points behind Larson; a gap larger than the one Blaney was facing a year ago. And only four drivers are within 61 points like Dillon was at this point a year ago."

In other words, it’s a matter of the rich getting richer, and the drivers running in the top 10 at the end of stages generally are the same ones near the front when things wind down (the Daytona 500, with its field shaken up by numerous wrecks, was a notable exception). So while drivers could use stage points to make up for poor finishes and stay in the hunt for the playoffs, they generally aren’t so far.

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Again, if the NASCAR Cup Series championship was decided solely by points like back in the day, this would be hand-wringing stuff. As it stands, unless you’re the fan of someone who runs well but doesn’t win that often (like, say, Jamie McMurray), it’s not likely to affect all that much. At the very least, it does provide a possible area for NASCAR to tinker with things again next season, and in a way that won’t likely cause much controversy.