MOTOR SPORTS: Does The Points Race Make Sense?

By Noah Davis UsFANS.com Managing Editor

Are racing fans being cheated at the end of each NASCAR season? Points leaders going into the final races often race not to crash, rather than race to win. Racing fans don’t have to look any further than Joe Gibbs’ racing team to see the flaws in the Winston Cup points system underscored.

One of his teams has clinched this year’s championship with one race left to go. The other one has won more races this season than any other team, but can barely crack the top five in the overall standings.

But Gibbs’ and his drivers are not complaining.

"Everybody wants to stir it up, asking if the points systems is right or wrong," said Tony Stewart, who has six victories this year but is fifth in points and 449 behind his teammate, Bobby Labonte. "The points system is what it is. You know what it is when you go into it."

Team owner Joe Gibbs said that's the important thing to remember when comparing statistics at the end of the season. "I think if you change the rules you're going to race accordingly," Gibbs said. "I think Bobby was aggressive all year long and he got four wins. I know that was their game plan."

So what’s the problem?

Labonte was clearly racing for points last week, and not racing to win. His own crew chief, Jimmy Makar, indicated that clinching the points championship with a fourth-place finish will allow them to "get back to racing" this weekend, at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the last race of the year.

Labonte has been nursing his lead lately, and not pushing for wins. Having been more consistent than his opponents has allowed him to race for placement, rather than worrying about winning.

"We're going to Atlanta and race hard like we've been wanting to for the past few months," Makar said. "We've got some things that we've been wanting to do that we haven't been able to do because it has been a little bit on the edge. We've just been afraid to do it until now. We're going to have a little bit of fun in Atlanta and let our hair down, go race hard and see what happens."

Makar’s comments point right to the heart of the matter. It’s the whole concept of "points racing" that brings criticism to the Winston Cup system. Critics say there should be more of a difference between first place and any other position than there is now, when the five-point difference between first and second is the same as the five-point difference between second and third.

The current system rewards consistency, and the winning margin in the championship race usually comes not from piling up a lot of victories, but from racking up top fives and top 10s while largely avoiding disastrously bad results.

This season will be the seventh time in the past 10 years that the points champion will not be the driver who won the most races.

This year is not nearly as egregious as 1996, when points champion Terry Labonte won just twice and Jeff Gordon won a monstrous 10 times, or 1985, when Bill Elliott won an incredible 11 races but Darrell Waltrip won the title with a mere three victories.

Stewart has six wins this year while Labonte, Jeff Burton and Rusty Wallace all have four.

For the season, Labonte has 18 top-five finishes, three more than Burton or Dale Jarrett, and is tied with Jarrett with 24 top-10 finishes. Most importantly, Labonte's worst finish has been a 26th at Richmond. Stewart, by comparison, has six finishes outside the top 25.

Apply the points systems used in the Indy Racing League, Formula One or the Championship Auto Racing Teams series to this year's Winston Cup results and Labonte would be ahead in all of them, although only in the IRL system would he already be assured of the title.

Still, wins-leader Stewart isn’t pushing for more points for the winner.

"The guy who goes out there and wins six or seven races but crashes eight or nine times shouldn't be the guy who wins the championship," Stewart said. "It should be the guy who's out there each week and knows when to push hard and when to take it easy when he doesn't have the perfect car all day.

"NASCAR isn't a bunch of idiots. They've done this for more than 50 years and I think they've done a good job developing the product. I think they've developed a points system that is very appropriate for our sport."

That’s the question, isn’t it? Are we fans being cheated though, by drivers who do have a great car in a race toward the end of the season, and don’t push it because they just need to finish fourth?

Why should the last NASCAR race of the season be completely meaningless - again?

Article courtesy of UsFANS.com