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Benefit of Bonus Points Negligible in NASCAR

An Opinion



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September 10, 2010

By Rebecca Gladden

Rebecca Gladden


Kevin Harvick has a talent for telling it like it is.

In an interview with the media prior to last week's Sprint Cup race in Atlanta, Harvick was asked whether he was concerned about earning more bonus points prior to the start of the Chase.

"It doesn't matter," said Harvick. "You can lose 100 points in one week."

Harvick, the current Sprint Cup points leader, is right. In one race, a driver can actually gain or lose as many as 161 points. That's not likely to happen between Chase competitors, but teams stand to gain or lose even more points because of the Chase format itself. More on that in a moment.

NASCAR introduced its current points format, the Chase for the Championship, back in 2004, and added the bonus points in 2007. Under the current system, the top 12 drivers in points after 26 races compete against each other for the Cup title during the last 10 races of the year.

All 12 drivers start the Chase with 5000 points, plus 10 bonus points per regular season race win. With one race to go before the Chase begins this year, the bonus points among the current top-12 drivers shape up like this: Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin lead the season-wins category with five each and would start the Chase with 5050 points. Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch have three wins (5030 points), Kurt Busch has two wins (5020 points), and Tony Stewart and Greg Biffle have one win a piece (5010 points). Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards, Jeff Burton, Matt Kenseth, and Clint Bowyer are all winless this season and would start the Chase with an even 5000 points. Biffle and Bowyer are the only drivers still not mathematically locked into the Chase.

When NASCAR added the 10 bonus points per win back in 2007, it was attempting to incentivize drivers and teams to win races during the regular season rather than settle for a steady accumulation of points in order to make the Chase. "The adjustments taken today put a greater emphasis on winning races," NASCAR CEO Brian France said at the time. "Winning is what this sport is all about. Nobody likes to see drivers content to finish in the top 10."

Of course, race car drivers always want to win races - it's the essence of the sport. But in the highly competitive Cup Series, drivers are forced to straddle a fine line between daring to win races and doing what is necessary to consistently accrue points.

Are 10 bonus points per race win enough to entice Chase contenders to go for wins during the regular season?

Apparently not, according to Kevin Harvick. But do the numbers support him?

Let's take 2008 as an example. At this point in the season, just prior to race number 26 at Richmond, Kyle Busch was the points leader with eight regular season wins, followed by Carl Edwards in second with six wins, and Jimmie Johnson in third with three wins. Johnson won the Richmond race, so he started the Chase ranked third with 5040 points; Edwards was second with 5050 (he lost ten bonus points as the result of a penalty), and Busch led the standings with 5080 points. Busch's lead was a full 80 points over the five Chase drivers who had not won a regular season race, including Greg Biffle.

Then came Loudon, the first race of the 2008 Chase. Busch had mechanical problems and finished the race three laps down in 34th-place. The winner was Greg Biffle, followed by Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards.

In just one day, the point standings that took 26 races to build up had been turned upside-down. Busch tumbled seven spots, from first to eighth in points, while Biffle climbed six spots from ninth to third, and Johnson slid up into second.

That one race had long-term implications, negating any benefit Busch had received from his bonus points. He never recovered from the dramatic plummet and ended the season in tenth place. Biffle held onto third in the standings, while Johnson took the title, helped by three wins during the Chase.

Only once since 2007 has Johnson been seeded first in the Chase based on his regular season wins, though he has claimed the championship all three years. Last year, Mark Martin leapfrogged nine spots in the standings - from tenth to first - at the onset of the Chase thanks to four regular season wins, but ended the season in second, 141 points behind Johnson.

Despite the best efforts of media pundits and NASCAR PR to create a compelling storyline about the significance of bonus points, their value is largely inconsequential.

The ruling that has a much more dramatic effect on the championship is the Chase format itself, which resets the regular season points to 5000 for all 12 contenders (to which bonus points are added), effectively erasing their points totals from the first 26 races.

In 2007, for example, Jeff Gordon was leading the Sprint Cup points heading into race number 26 at Richmond, while Jimmie Johnson was sixth, 430 points behind Gordon. After Richmond, Gordon was ranked second, 20 points behind Johnson - a net loss of 450 points - with one wave of the Chase wand. This year, Kevin Harvick stands to lose at least 219 points - his current lead - when the points are reset after Richmond.

And with a system like that, it's easy to see why Harvick feels that a few bonus points don't matter much.

Follow Rebecca on Twitter: @nscrwriter




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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.

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