June 22, 2005

By Rebecca Gladden

In early 2004, NASCAR CEO Brian France unveiled a revamped point system for the sport's Nextel Cup series. Under the new system dubbed the Chase for the Championship, only the 10 drivers who had accumulated the most points after 26 races would compete for the title in the season's final 10-race playoff.

One of the drivers in last year's premiere Chase competition was fan favorite Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Earnhardt was third in points entering the Chase and, due to the resetting of points after the first 26 races, was only 10 points out of first. One race later, with a strong second-place finish at Loudon, Junior had pulled even with Kurt Busch for the points lead.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the championship.

The third Chase race took place at Talladega Superspeedway, a track where Dale Junior and DEI teammate Michael Waltrip had combined for five wins in the previous six races held there. Earnhardt was an odds-on favorite for the win, which would have further solidified his lead in the Chase.

True to form, Earnhardt Jr. took the checkered flag at Talladega, and would have taken the point's lead as well. But in a now-infamous Victory Lane blunder, an exuberant Earnhardt uttered a swear word on national TV in violation of FCC rules. He was fined $10,000 and 25 points by NASCAR, dropping him back to 2nd place, 12 points behind eventual champion Kurt Busch.

The decision to deduct points from a legitimate title contender was enormously controversial. While Earnhardt ultimately lost to Busch by more than 25 points, no one knew at the time whether the 25-point penalty would be enough to keep the #8 driver from winning the Cup.

Defenders of the penalty argued that the points deduction was necessary because monetary fines are meaningless to drivers with multimillion-dollar incomes. As NASCAR.com columnist Marty Smith wrote, "Monetary fines carry little weight in this sport." Fox Sports analyst Larry McReynolds concurred, stating, "Do I agree with NASCAR's decision to set a precedent by taking away points? Not really, but in NASCAR's defense, the $10,000, $25,000 and $50,000 fines don't seem to get people's attention. They're not going to run the wells dry with fines, so taking away points is the next step."

While the argument over monetary fines for drivers is nothing new, an article in last week's Wall Street Journal sheds new light on the issue.

According to the Journal article:

"At the end of each season, fines collected from drivers and crews are pooled together and disbursed to the top 25 racers. (Shares are determined by where the drivers finish in the final point standings). As a result, some violators not only get their penalty money back, but they actually earn a profit. In last year's Nextel Cup, NASCAR's top series, the racing circuit levied 73 fines totaling $384,495, for infractions such as installing illegal windows or shoving another driver after a race. The team of champion Kurt Busch collected 22% of the total - or $84,588. Not bad, considering the team had been fined several times during the season, for a total of $21,000."

You read that right, folks. The #97 team paid $21,000 in fines for the 2004 season and received a rebate of over $84,000 from the collective fund at year's end.

"We don't look at it as recouping fines," a spokesman for Busch told the Wall Street Journal. "It's just prize money."

The Wall Street Journal article goes on to explain that NASCAR is the only major sport which distributes fines back to its competitors at the end of the year: "The National Basketball Association, the National Football League and Major League Baseball all direct their penalty money to philanthropic [charity] organizations approved by league executives or players' unions." NASCAR does not.

And the greater irony is that only the top 25 teams receive a share of the disbursement. Theoretically, a few of those teams may have made it into the top 25 by virtue of the very infractions that they are at once penalized and rewarded for. Struggling teams at the bottom of the pecking order - perhaps those most in need of financial assistance - receive nothing.

Since the dawn of the Brian France era, critics have complained that too many changes have been made to the sport too quickly - new points system, new schedule, new tires, new spoiler, new gear rule, new impound races, and so on. The suddenness of all this has created an unsettled feeling among fans and competitors alike, as if trying to gain one's footing on a continually shifting surface, with nothing solid to grasp on to.

But at the risk of sounding heretical, one more change is clearly in order. Money collected from fines should be distributed to charity, not back to the drivers. In a sport constantly striving to achieve a reputation of legitimacy, this one is simply a no-brainer.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN. Although we may not always agree with what is said, we do feel it's our duty to give a voice to those who have something relevant to say about the sport of auto racing.