Not a big Mark Martin fan (though I do like to see him do well) and I think the manufacturers thing is a joke. But if Mark wins he definitely deserves it. I think this thread is really about the new points system and how people react to it according to who is in the Chase. I think everyone here knows I'm a Jr fan. Jr's in the Chase. I'm also a pretty big fan of Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Ryan Newman, Jeremy Mayfield, and Elliott Sadler. All in the Chase.........so you can see I have a lot of excitement ahead of me for the next 8 races!
There are also some "almost got there" drivers I'm a fan of........DJ, Jamie McMurray, and Kevin Harvick. And I'm even a fan of Jimmy Spencer and he was no where close to the Chase.
What I see as a vast improvement over the old points system is that we are 8 races away from seeing who's going to take the trophy home in NYC this December and no one knows who it will be...........any one of the the 10 in the Chase is about as close as one can come to a prediction! Never, have I ever seen that with 8 to go........the "best" Championship battles were between two drivers (there may have been three involved once, but I can't remember it) at this point in the season. Sometimes it was really locked up to just one with all that driver having to do is start and finish a few and just start the rest and he had it clinched. That's really not what I call a good Championship battle.......in fact I call it coasting to a Championship. The old system encouraged that type of Championships............and it happened all too often. I agree that there are problems with the new system........but, hopefully they will be ironed out with some tweaking. But the old system with it's real heavy emphasis on consistency was flawed beyond mere tweaking..........it needed at least a minor overhaul. The new system was that overhaul. The way I see it, it works. It works better than the old system...........the drivers have been racing harder all season and it shows with the number of wins, top fives, top tens and even top twenties for the teams that were even in the park for a chance of getting in the coveted top ten or within that magic number of 400 points! Now, I want someone to tell that the first 26 races didn't offer that excitement of getting into the Chase. And now that we are in the Chase tell me why it's not exciting knowing that there are ten (not two or three) potential winners of the Title. Every single one of the drivers in the top ten deserve to win the Championship........
every single one of them.
And those "almost got there" drivers..........they don't deserve it. If they did, they would be there for the Chase. Not racing for that new 11th place million bucks. I know about Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch last season so don't throw that out. Any driver in the series knew the rule going in this season..........it just wasn't the same as before. If they deserved to be in the Chase they needed to do what Jeremy Mayfield did.........get there! They failed. They are also rans. Better luck next year.
