A field of 40 at Homestead? How about a field of Just four?
If there’s one thing that can be said about the way that NASCAR has decided a champion in the Chase/playoffs era, it’s that it is a work in progress. Rarely has more than a year or two gone by without some small change to the formula of determining who is eligible to race for the Cup Series championship down the stretch.
One of the more interesting aspects to the playoff races is that the other cars are still out there. There are full fields for the final 10 races, and in some respect, that makes sense because it’s the same kind of competition that the title contenders have had to deal with to get to the postseason in the first place. It only makes sense.
(It also gives the non-playoff drivers a chance to keep competing hard, since they can still get race wins, and that means something.)
But as veteran NASCAR scribe Dave Caldwell points out in his latest Forbes column, it doesn’t have to be that way. His idea is a pretty radical change from the status quo.
"If the Cup season really has to be 36 races long, there are cleaner ways of determining a champ — like having separate races for the contenders and slowpokes.The races at Homestead, to use an example, would be 200 miles each — long enough to have pit and fuel strategy to come into play, but without those silly stages. The playoff field could even be trimmed the same way, from 16 to 12 to eight to four after three-race segments.Imagine a 200-mile race between just four drivers under the lights at Homestead for the championship. It would be kind of like a title fight in boxing, with just the contestants on the track to decide the outcome. But there is time and room for a Philadelphia Eagles-style upset."
Let’s peel this idea back a bit. The pros are obvious. The winner-takes-all appeal of just having the Championship 4 on the track to battle it out is super intuitive. There could still be plenty of drama, and it would make for good TV as the broadcast would be honed in on just a handful of cars. With no other cars to contend with, the nightmare scenario of an early wreck taking out the championship hopefuls followed by three hours of relatively meaningless racing would be a non-issue.
There are also obvious downsides. With four cars, the possibility of them getting spread out three or four laps after a restart with no passing for miles and miles is very real. For the fans at the track, one wonders how exciting it would be to see just four vehicles pass by and then nothing until they come by again for a bit. Plus there would be a whole new worst-case scenario, where mechanical problems or a wreck take out one or two cars early and then you have just two cars who might not even get near each other once one pulls away after a restart. Or you could be left with just one car after 75 miles, and then the race would just … end, we guess?
On top of all that, there’s the simple fact that a sizable portion of the NASCAR fanbase is hesitant to support any change that feels too severe, and having just a few cars for a race that means something (would it still “count” as a race win if you beat just three other drivers, by the way?) is the very definition of that. Caldwell deserves kudos for thinking outside the box for ways to spice up NASCAR, as he has all year, but this is one concept it’s hard to fully support.