The Chase for the Cup (or Lack There Of)

Jimmie Johnson is looking like a champ yet again(AP Photo/Jim Bounds)

For those of you that may have fallen asleep during Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Martinsville Speedway, you can wake up now, the race is over. And what a ho-hum race it was with Jimmie Johnson leading over half of the race to take his sixth win of the 2008 season and put a firm grip on his third straight series championship with a lead of 149 points over Greg Biffle after 32 of 36 races. Needless to say, this is not what NASCAR had in mind when they created the Chase for the Cup before the 2004 season. The Chase was created at the time to have the top ten drivers (or those within 400 points) after 26 races get their points reset before the final 10 races so first had only a 45 point lead over tenth. On paper it looked like The Chase would create nail biting action right down to the final lap of the season. Here is a look at how the first four editions went:
2004-Kurt Busch was seventh in points entering the first race of The Chase and was able to hold off Jimmie Johnson by eight points, Jeff Gordon by sixteen points, Mark Martin by 107 points, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. by 138 points to take the Inaugural Chase in an exciting finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The Chase was off to an exciting start.
2005-Tony Stewart was the points leader after 26 races and held onto the lead to become the first (and currently only) driver to win a championship in the traditional and chase format. On this occasion, Stewart held off Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, Mark Martin, and Jimmie Johnson to take the title. The final point separation between Stewart, Biffle and Edwards was 35 points. The Chase was still looking like a pretty good idea.
2006-Jimmie Johnson was just five points behind leader Matt Kenseth entering The Chase and was able to take the title over Kenseth, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. The final margin of victory in points was 56, the biggest in the short history of The Chase.
2007-For the second year in a row, Jimmie Johnson was the champion. The field for the chase was expanded to 12 and point differentials were set based on number of wins. Due to this, Johnson entered the chase with a 20-point lead over Jeff Gordon. In the end, Johnson took the title by a rather anti-climactic margin of 77 points as he and Gordon were the only two in the running at the final race.
The Chase this season began with Kyle Busch, hottest driver on the circuit in the first half of '08, holding a 30-point lead over Carl Edwards and 40-point lead over Jimmie Johnson. Bad luck for Busch has made him into a non-factor in the final ten races. Johnson has caught fire as he usually does in the second half and is looking like a certain champion as he heads to Atlanta, Texas, and Phoenix, three tracks that he always excels at.

The last two seasons have added fuel to the fires that many have been stoking since 2004 that the chase is an unneeded thing and that NASCAR should go back to the traditional points format. Those folks argue that the Craftsman Truck Series often have multiple guys going for the championship and they don't need a manufactured tight finish. In 2003, the year before the chase began, the Nationwide (then Busch) Series had six drivers separated by 89 points entering the season finale.
Fact of the matter is that some seasons a guy will just run away from the competition, like Matt Kenseth did in 2003, causing the chase to come to be, and other times drivers will have a hot streak and then that will be balanced out by a run of bad luck that tightens things up. We saw that back in 1992 when six drivers entered the last at that time Winston Cup race of the season in Atlanta with a shot at the title.
At the end of the day should The Chase stay or go? I think that the traditional format was fine. The Chase is a good idea on paper but needs something that guarantees that it will be exciting to end like maybe expanding it to 12 races and eliminating the low driver each week and resetting the point totals for those left so it would come right down to the wire. No matter what they do, all we fans can do is hope that in the final few races of 2008 the points race will tighten up so Jimmie Johnson has to do at least a little bit of work to secure his third straight championship.
Be sure to check back later this week for a look ahead at what is going to be going on in racing this weekend.