June 20, 2009
By Rebecca Gladden
Quick! Who has the most wins so far this Cup season?
A. Kyle Busch and Mark Martin with three wins a piece.
Who has the most top-5 finishes?
A. Jeff Gordon.
Who has the most poles?
A. Brian Vickers and Mark Martin with three poles a piece.
Which drivers have led the most laps?
A. Kyle Busch, followed by Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin and Greg Biffle.
So, who is leading the championship point standings?
A. Tony Stewart, of course.
It seems a little strange, doesn't it?
Fifteen races into the 2009 season and Stewart hasn't won the most races, led the most laps, scored the most poles, or garnered the most top-5 finishes.
But, there he is, sitting atop the Sprint Cup standings, by 47 points over Jeff Gordon in second and 142 points over Jimmie Johnson in third.
Stewart has the points lead because of the one statistical category that I didn't mention above: average finish.
In other words, consistency.
Stewart's average finish is just 8.9 this season - far better than Jimmie Johnson's 12.9, Mark Martin's 16.2, or Kyle Busch's 16.5.
In 15 races, Stewart has no DNFs, just two finishes below 20th, and has finished fourth or better seven times.
Stewart has also completed more laps than any other driver - 4645 laps - followed by Jeff Burton and Ryan Newman. He's led more miles than anyone as well, and is the only driver with 13 lead-lap finishes in the first 15 races this season - six other drivers have 12.
Striking the perfect balance between consistency and wins is an age-old struggle for NASCAR teams. In 2003, for example, Ryan Newman won eight races, but Matt Kenseth took the title with just one win while Newman finished sixth in the standings.
Kenseth's average finish, however, was 10.3 to Newman's 13.9.
Some fans mistakenly think that the Chase for the Championship points format was introduced in 2004 to address the perceived injustice from the prior season. But the truth is the Chase was intended to do one thing: create more drama in the latter third of the NASCAR season, when fans were drifting away the dullness of a sport in which the title was all but decided weeks in advance, to the thrill of a brand-new NFL year.
Even after 2007, when NASCAR attempted to incentivize wins by adding ten bonus points per regular season victory for drivers making the Chase, consistency still trumps winning when it comes to title runs, The Chase format, however, shifts the emphasis to the last ten-race stretch of the season, almost discarding what happened in the first 26 races.
Last year, Kyle Busch won eight of the first 26 races and had a lead of 369 points over Jimmie Johnson heading into Richmond, the final regular season race. That lead was slashed to just 40 points due to the Chase format, and Busch struggled in the final ten races, with an average finish of 19.1 during that stretch compared to Johnson's 5.7. Johnson took the title; Busch finished tenth.
Whether Tony Stewart wins the championship in 2009 remains to be seen, but right now he's winning the battle for consistency, and it's paying great dividends.
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