Cup Championship RACE thread

Marty Schnider walked up to Custer last night after he won the championship and said basically said that he didn't have any business winning because they had such a crummy season. Today before the race (game) started he said that the race felt like a game 7 moment. Where do they find these idiots?
 
FLRacingFan said:
I was stuck at my nephew’s birthday party and only caught the last 30 laps so it hasn’t completely sunk in yet. I have to go back and rewatch the segments where he was competitive and leading laps. That must’ve been a blast to be out front one final time.

I have had always Gordon or Harvick to root for since I got into the sport as a kid in 2001, so this is the end of my childhood fandom for good. Kinda sad to see all the old guys moving on. But he had a great career and I’m glad I was there at Homestead in 2014.
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Never was a Harvick guy but watching all the guys I grew up watching slowly retire is so weird. Only Hamlin, Truex, and Busch remain from my first real memories of watching in 2006. Thankfully I still had Brad and Truex running when Jr retired but I don’t know what I going to do once they retire.
 
ToyYoda said:
To be fair, that happened a few times pre-Chase/Playoffs too. In 1985 a 3-win DW beat an 11-win Bill Elliott for the championship, and in 1996 a 2-win Terry Labonte won the title over a 10-win Jeff Gordon.
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Thank you. Also maybe they wanted to have a playoff format back then but realized Dale Sr would’ve wrecked the field
 
The Nature Boy said:
If you can’t perform when it counts, you don’t deserve to be a champion. Blaney performed when it counted.
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Solid statement. While I am not sure I fully support the one race determines the championship approach I can say from personal experience there are those that step it up a notch under pressure while others seem to maintain the status quo. Those that step it up are deserving the championship.
 
I like Blaney and he is the legitimate champion that won it fair and square 9based on the established criteria.

But I have to admit that seriously underestimated him. I think I picked him to be eliminated in everyone of the previous rounds. It just seems like he got better and better as the season progressed and definitely hit his peek at the right time.
 
Greg said:
I like Blaney and he is the legitimate champion that won it fair and square 9based on the established criteria.

But I have to admit that seriously underestimated him. I think I picked him to be eliminated in everyone of the previous rounds. It just seems like he got better and better as the season progressed and definitely hit his peek at the right time.
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I noted in another thread a couple of weeks ago ( cant remember which one) That I thought the 12 bunch had found something for the playoffs and the way that car responded yesterday from a 15th place start I have little doubt now I was right. I kept up with lap times all day and he was at times 2 tenths faster than the field but consistently a tenth / tenth and a half faster. The Blue Oval came through in the Clutch and its Because of that 12 bunch, they better renew everyone's contract so that secret doesn't get out!
 
Spotter22 said:
I noted in another thread a couple of weeks ago ( cant remember which one) That I thought the 12 bunch had found something for the playoffs and the way that car responded yesterday from a 15th place start I have little doubt now I was right. I kept up with lap times all day and he was at times 2 tenths faster than the field but consistently a tenth / tenth and a half faster. The Blue Oval came through in the Clutch and its Because of that 12 bunch, they better renew everyone's contract so that secret doesn't get out!
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I dove a little deeper and Ross accumulated the most " fastest laps" at 52, Blaney came in second at 36 Buescher at 34 and get this Lajoie at 30. Larson only had 4 ,that is shocking to me.
 
any form of "playoff" in any form of motorsports is an awful idea.

Motorsports just isnt like stick and ball sports. In motorsports you compete against every single one of your competitors every single week.

in other sports, you compete against one other competitor at a time.

For the life of me, I dont understand why Nascar has implemented a playoff format of any type. Its one of, if not the major reason that the popularity of the sport has fallen off a cliff.
 
Go Panthers said:
any form of "playoff" in any form of motorsports is an awful idea.

Motorsports just isnt like stick and ball sports. In motorsports you compete against every single one of your competitors every single week.

in other sports, you compete against one other competitor at a time.

For the life of me, I dont understand why Nascar has implemented a playoff format of any type. Its one of, if not the major reason that the popularity of the sport has fallen off a cliff.
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I know! I was trying to explain it to my girlfriend last night who isn't a motorsports fan and she thought the whole thing was dumb.

So you have a championship race that 4 guys are competing for the championship but everyone else races too?

So how did that guy not win the championship race but win the championship?

So did he do better than everyone else the rest of the season and that's why he gets the championship? Well not really....

So the #1 car was in the playoffs and won the championship race but didn't win the championship? No he was eliminated... then why is he still in this race?

For die hards we can understand this but the more a casual fan learns the less they get it

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Blaze said:
Then see we agree?

The only champ I ever said was not deserving was Kyle in 2015, and no one will change my mind on that.
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Kyle probably doesn’t win the title that year under the current format, as he would have missed out on 11 races worth of stage/playoff points.

That 2014-2016 playoff format was so bad.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
A futile attempt to keep viewers when football season starts.
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And NASCAR’s popularity peaked AFTER the introduction of the Chase. If I remember correctly, the most watched race in NASCAR history was the 2006 Daytona 500. NASCAR's popularity dipped for a variety of reasons but I don't think the Chase/Playoffs was a big factor.

You can look at the raw data here: https://www.jayski.com/2006-nascar-tv-ratings/

NASCAR's ratings increased after 2004 and started to decline in 2006. Looking at 2007 data, you see a continued decline (https://www.jayski.com/2007-nascar-tv-ratings/). I don't know if the 2004 and 2005 Chases were so off putting that people tuned out. I guess it's possible but it's a question that we'll never actually get the answer to because we can't create an alternate reality where the Chase doesn't exist.

I do think that the Chase/Playoffs were a solution in search of a problem. NASCAR's late season ratings at the time did see a slight dip when the NFL started but they were able to hold a good chunk of the audience. The 2003 Rockingham race actually saw an increase in viewership over the 2002 race, despite Kenseth running away with the championship. I think the decline happens either way. NASCAR made a series of decisions in the late 2000s that turned a lot of people off and was a fad whose bubble had burst.

Go Panthers said:
it simply does not reward the best driver throughout the entire season.
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But this isn't the point of a playoff system and once you accept that then it's easier to swallow. Look at baseball, the best teams were knocked out in the divisional round of the playoffs this year. A playoff is meant to reward those who can perform at the right time and under pressure. No sport has a playoff that rewards the best team all season. Every single one is prone to a fluke upset ruining a year long body of work.

Any system that has a consistent set of rules and criteria is genuine. Ryan Blaney won under a genuine system.
 
Go Panthers said:
the current system isnt genuine. it simply does not reward the best driver throughout the entire season.
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Yep, it's a gimmick just like all the other stick and ball sport terms they have inserted into NASCAR like "overtime" (which is the worst), "call an audible", "out of bounds", etc.
 
SeventyGTX said:
Yep, it's a gimmick just like all the other stick and ball sport terms they have inserted into NASCAR like "overtime" (which is the worst), "call an audible", "out of bounds", etc.
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are you saying its working?

nascar has torn down stands
viewership is down
nascar lacks a single title sponsor
drivers and teams dont make as much money as they used too

Congrats to Blaney, he's a true champion. he won under the current format. I'm not knocking him.
 
At the end of the day, will NASCAR fans accept Ryan Blaney as champion? My guess is "yes" in no small part that a "post-season" has existed in NASCAR for nearly 20 years. Pretty much any fan under 30 predominantly knows and probably accepts if not prefers this format.

Like with Hudson O'Neal winning the Lucas Oil Late Model title, I'm not enamored with the system that produced it but also recognize that both NASCAR and dirt late models are not my primary focus as a racing fan. I can watch plenty of other things that I find more pleasing to what I want to get from racing.

As someone who honestly doesn't follow much week to week, my major takeaway from looking at the stats and the kinda lousy way in which the playoffs are structured and shown to fans is that Blaney could be stated as having essentially "won his way out" to get the title. I'd love to see it be explained otherwise to me what role the stage points may have played in him making the final 12 given that he won races in the next two stages to put him in the finale, and was in the playoffs largely because he won a single "regular season" race. The entire purpose of the stages as they are constructed from a competition standpoint (I understand the real reason for them is to have extended commercial breaks) is that they provide points which have relevance to the title picture. I'm not sure that there is actually evidence for this. It actually seems more or less like winning a race in the regular season to guarantee playoff berth followed by "in season testing" during races would have more value. Blaney won the 14th points race of the season out of 26: in the 13 preceding the Coke 600, he has an average finished of 12.5. In the 12 following the Coke 600, his average finish slips to 20.7. Starting position drops two spots from 11.8 to 13.8. Lots of context I'm probably missing though.
 
Go Panthers said:
the current system isnt genuine. it simply does not reward the best driver throughout the entire season.
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How can you possibly know that?

There is no best driver throughout the entire season because teams don't try to execute entire seasons.

It's why the whole "who would have won under the full season format" is nonsensical. The full season long points at the end of the year do NOT reflect who would have been the best all year if points racing for 36 races were a thing.

Teams and drivers make decisions throughout the season knowing that points racing isn't crucial, so the total points in the end don't tell us anything. For example, the 5 car had 8 dnfs this year. A lot of them were on Larson. The playoffs gave him the luxury to leave "full season points" on the table.

The fact is, we don't KNOW who the best driver is all year because that's not how teams execute.

All we know is who the best drivers are within this current set of rules. And that's been Larson and Blaney.

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jaqua19 said:
There is no best driver throughout the entire season because teams don't try to execute entire seasons.
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And this is why I hate this format, and have hated it since The Chase was implemented. Just the fact that people can suggest this that this statement is true......... you, me and the rest of this board know that isnt true but the fact that it is said is a con of this system. As for those saying the best driver didnt win this year, well statistically, I guess someone could make a case for that but he won the championship in the same format as everyone else. His team figured something out at the start of the playoffs, got hot and won.... it really is as simple as that. He's just as deserving a champion as the rest in this year's Championship 4 and the rest that have won before him, he was the best in this format when it mattered.
 
Go Panthers said:
are you saying its working?

nascar has torn down stands
viewership is down
nascar lacks a single title sponsor
drivers and teams dont make as much money as they used too

Congrats to Blaney, he's a true champion. he won under the current format. I'm not knocking him.
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What you are saying maybe true, but I am not sure if a full season format fixes all that. I dont think it'd be the slam dunk that most would think it be, I mean I would love to try it but I dont think the problems you alluded to are magically fixed if Steve Phelps and his honchos reinstitute a full season points championship.
 
Go Panthers said:
are you saying its working?

nascar has torn down stands
viewership is down
nascar lacks a single title sponsor
drivers and teams dont make as much money as they used too

Congrats to Blaney, he's a true champion. he won under the current format. I'm not knocking him.
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Aren't a lot of those issues because NASCAR overbuilt during the bubble and had to correct a bit? The title sponsor thing is one thing but NASCAR also overbuilt stands during the boom period and costs escalated to an unsustainable point (which drove teams out of business when the bubble burst). In a lot of ways, you're also forgiving short sightedness on NASCAR's part and their failure to anticipate their bubble potentially bursting.
 
Jorge De Guzman said:
What you are saying maybe true, but I am not sure if a full season format fixes all that. I dont think it'd be the slam dunk that most would think it be, I mean I would love to try it but I dont think the problems you alluded to are magically fixed if Steve Phelps and his honchos reinstitute a full season points championship.
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maybe it wouldnt.

id probably watch more than 15 minutes of the Daytona 500 if it was though.

Keep in mind, i didnt use to miss a race.

I fully understand it may just be me also.
 
The Nature Boy said:
Aren't a lot of those issues because NASCAR overbuilt during the bubble and had to correct a bit? The title sponsor thing is one thing but NASCAR also overbuilt stands during the boom period and costs escalated to an unsustainable point (which drove teams out of business when the bubble burst). In a lot of ways, you're also forgiving short sightedness on NASCAR's part and their failure to anticipate their bubble potentially bursting.
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sure they are. NASCAR has made a lot of bad decisions over the past 20 years. Playoffs is one of them, but so is the begging for attention they went after in the late 90s and early 2000s. they forgot their roots.
 
Go Panthers said:
sure they are. NASCAR has made a lot of bad decisions over the past 20 years. Playoffs is one of them, but so is the begging for attention they went after in the late 90s and early 2000s. they forgot their roots.
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NASCAR told their loyal base that they weren't wanted or needed when they abandoned places like Wilkesboro and Rockingham. NASCAR didn't realize they were a fad so they thought that it was perfectly fine to abandon their Southern base. When the trend riders went away, so had their actual fans.
 
The Nature Boy said:
NASCAR told their loyal base that they weren't wanted or needed when they abandoned places like Wilkesboro and Rockingham.
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Fans told NASCAR they didn't want Rockingham when they abandoned the place, or at least didn't buy tickets. I sat there and watched attendance dwindle for almost a decade. There was nothing loyal about that fan base.

I can't speak to NW, but don't blame NASCAR for that one.
 
The arguments about where real NASCAR fans were or are or whatever just tire me out. In the mid-90s, Busch North and Winston West are doing hunky dory for attendance and car counts. ARCA was a predominantly midwestern series that has solid car counts, and of course it had competed for a good chunk of the 50s-80s with USAC. USAC also, I'm willing to bet given their demands to exclusivity for drivers, probably didn't have a lot of crossover with ARCA during most or all of that era but a stack of drivers all their own with well attended races at tracks all over. All I ever hear about though are the southern fans, as though they own stock car racing and NASCAR alone and were "abandoned." I've taken the entire alternate tact: that for as much as NASCAR chased new fans, they did so with only the trappings of their historic southern roots and nothing about anyone else who was part of that climb up the ladder.

And don't get me started on the modifieds. Dear lawd.
 
Go Panthers said:
any form of "playoff" in any form of motorsports is an awful idea.

Motorsports just isnt like stick and ball sports. In motorsports you compete against every single one of your competitors every single week.

in other sports, you compete against one other competitor at a time.

For the life of me, I dont understand why Nascar has implemented a playoff format of any type. Its one of, if not the major reason that the popularity of the sport has fallen off a cliff.
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There’s a wide variation in tracks which also means a variation in where drivers excel, bar a few that can pretty much win anywhere… whereas football players can’t cite much variations in football fields. It’s a bad translation; like you said, they are not the same.
 
FLRacingFan said:
Wild stat - after both drivers finished yesterday, Kevin Harvick closes his Cup career with one fewer DNF (48) than Kyle Larson (49), whom Harvick didn’t compete against until his 461st start.
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Harvick was a winner but he was also an outstanding points racer.(really sucks writing about him in the past tense).
 
Go Panthers said:
are you saying its working?

nascar has torn down stands
viewership is down
nascar lacks a single title sponsor
drivers and teams dont make as much money as they used too

Congrats to Blaney, he's a true champion. he won under the current format. I'm not knocking him.
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Oh heck no, I'm not saying it's working at all. In fact I know people that are no longer interested in NASCAR because of some of the ridiculous rules changes. I agree congrats to Blaney, he played by the rules and won.

Personally, I think there is something wrong with having a system where a guy could theoretically win every race up to the last one, only to lose the championship because of something like what happened to Bell deny him of what he deserved. After winning 10 races and dominating the season, Larson could have very easily been denied the Cup in 2021 had his team not beat Hamlin off pit road on that last stop. I just can't see one race dictating an entire season.
 
SeventyGTX said:
Personally, I think there is something wrong with having a system where a guy could theoretically win every race up to the last one, only to lose the championship because of something like what happened to Bell deny him of what he deserved.
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This is a popular talking point but this was also mathematically possible under the Latford system. If the 2nd place guy led the most laps in every race then he would have tied the winner in points accumulated in every single race. If the 1st place guy has problems in the finale then a guy with one win would beat a guy with 35 wins.

Is this likely? No, but neither is someone winning every single race. Is it possible? Yes, which undermines this talking point entirely.
 
The Nature Boy said:
This is a popular talking point but this was also mathematically possible under the Latford system. If the 2nd place guy led the most laps in every race then he would have tied the winner in points accumulated in every single race. If the 1st place guy has problems in the finale then a guy with one win would beat a guy with 35 wins.

Is this likely? No, but neither is someone winning every single race. Is it possible? Yes, which undermines this talking point entirely.
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Bonus points for winning a race prevents that.
 
jaqua19 said:
How can you possibly know that?

There is no best driver throughout the entire season because teams don't try to execute entire seasons.

It's why the whole "who would have won under the full season format" is nonsensical. The full season long points at the end of the year do NOT reflect who would have been the best all year if points racing for 36 races were a thing.

Teams and drivers make decisions throughout the season knowing that points racing isn't crucial, so the total points in the end don't tell us anything. For example, the 5 car had 8 dnfs this year. A lot of them were on Larson. The playoffs gave him the luxury to leave "full season points" on the table.

The fact is, we don't KNOW who the best driver is all year because that's not how teams execute.

All we know is who the best drivers are within this current set of rules. And that's been Larson and Blaney.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk
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I'd like to know what you mean by this?
 
Jorge De Guzman said:
And this is why I hate this format, and have hated it since The Chase was implemented. Just the fact that people can suggest this that this statement is true......... you, me and the rest of this board know that isnt true but the fact that it is said is a con of this system. As for those saying the best driver didnt win this year, well statistically, I guess someone could make a case for that but he won the championship in the same format as everyone else. His team figured something out at the start of the playoffs, got hot and won.... it really is as simple as that. He's just as deserving a champion as the rest in this year's Championship 4 and the rest that have won before him, he was the best in this format when it mattered.
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See, I think the Chase was entirely different. Because it wasn't as extreme as this.

Most teams generally tried to execute a full season because seeding mattered....because the last 10 races were all cumulative. I loved it because with that format you generally saw who was strongest, fastest AND most consistent all year , and those were your contenders. The Chase gave drivers a chance to be consistent and fast, and win a cup title. It wasn't just luck. It took performing at a TRULY ELITE due to seeding for the champion to be crowned. And champion, with the exception of 2011, was a top 3 driver all year who had to go on a 90s Jeff Gordon like run to secure the title. In 2005, Carl Edwards outperformed the champion in the Chase, but Tony's regular season excellence gave him enough of a gap to overcome it.

Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson dominated 2007. Johnson had a bit more speed, but lower lows, while Gordon had consistency. Gordons performance continued into the Chase, in fact, it improved. He ran better in the Chase than in the regular season, and it ultimately took excellence to define the champ, resulting in the two best teams all year performing at higher levels than they did all year.

In my opinion, and it may be unpopular, it was THE most definitive champion defining system we've ever had. The contenders were always the top drivers of the year... My line of thinking was..

"Who, out of the top 2 or 3 guys can take what they did in the regular season, and elevate that in a 2 month mini season?"

Every champion deserves to be champion, but I entirely disagree about the Chase. I've never cared about NASCAR more.

JMO.

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