New or Old NASCAR Points System. Which Do You Like?

This is one of the topics that always fires up both sides, how the drivers rank in the points with the old system versus the new? Where would your favorite be right now under the old system and more importantly, you least favorite, where would he be?

The proponents of the Chase like the way that it prevents runaways coming to the end of the season as well as citing the fact that talking about the old system doesn’t matter anyway because it isn’t used anymore.

The purists or the old school fans thought that the points system was fine the way it was and if one driver managed to dominate the entire season, then so be it. He was just that good and deserved to be rewarded for how he performed the entire season.

One of the bonuses of the Chase is that it makes the last ten races more exciting, but does it also make the first 26 less important?

There has been talk that maybe some of the teams were ‘sandbagging’ throughout the regular season and waited to show their cards until after the Chase started.

If the drivers in the top spots aren’t worried about the competition that’s chasing them, they might not do that extra test or experiment with something that could make them better, because why? If you were Kyle Busch heading into the Chase, how much testing and experimenting would you think that you needed to do? Probably not much.

Not to say that it is simple to make the Chase, but that is the one thing that did hold constant from the old system to the new, that if you weren’t in the top 12 with ten races to go that you probably weren’t going to win the Championship no matter which system you were under.

It’s doubtful that anyone would ‘sandbag’ themselves to 13th though, but how important is 10 points for winning a race [or eight]? Just ask Kyle Busch.

That leads us to the statistics. Where would the drivers be under the old system versus the new? Look at the lists below and see what jumps out at you first.

New Points System (Current Points After Kansas)
1. Jimmie Johnson 5575
2. Carl Edwards 5565 -10
3. Greg Biffle 5545 -30
4. Jeff Burton 5454 -121
5. Kevin Harvick 5439 -136
6. Jeff Gordon 5432 -143
7. Clint Bowyer 5411 -164
8. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. 5385 -190
9. Matt Kenseth 5383 -192
10. Denny Hamlin 5332 -243
11. Tony Stewart 5320 -255
12. Kyle Busch 5264 -311

Old Points System (Points After Kansas)
1. Carl Edwards 4186
2. Jimmie Johnson 4111 -75
3. Kyle Busch 4062 -124
4. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. 3863 -323
5. Jeff Burton 3828 -358
6. Greg Biffle 3825 -361
7. Kevin Harvick 3722 -464
8. Jeff Gordon 3653 -533
9. Tony Stewart 3605 -581
10. Denny Hamlin 3557 -629
11. Clint Bowyer 3517 -669
12. Matt Kenseth 3515 -671

Probably the first thing that you saw is that Kyle Busch under the old system would be 3rd instead of 12th only 124 points out of 1st even without any ‘bonus’ points.
The second thing that you probably noticed is that even though Dale Earnhardt, Jr. has catapulted up to 4th with the old system, he is 323 points behind 1st.
Currently he is 8th, but only 190 points back. Even the current 12th place Kyle Busch doesn’t have that big of a deficit that the 4th place does under the old system.

Under the old system it would be a lot more of a three-man race at this point in the season than it currently is.
Using the statistic that no driver 400 points out of 1st with 10 races left in the season had ever won the Championship, under the old system, 4th back was eliminated when the first race of the Chase began. I am not sure how popular that would have been now.

The one fact that remains is that no matter what the stats say, there will still be fans that want the old system back no matter how skewed it is heading to Homestead.

There can obviously be an argument made for either way, but so far this season it seems like NASCAR got it right. Even if your favorite driver isn’t up in the top 5, he still has a chance, which is something that might not be if the Chase didn’t exist.
One thing is for sure that it isn’t over and if Kyle Busch still has a mathematical chance to come back with 7 races to go then anyone can. It’s a long shot for any driver to win the Championship, so no one is saying that it’s easy, but your driver still has a chance if he’s in the top Chase. Under the old system… not so much.

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