I noticed that, too. Watching Byron lose after the year he had was particularly painful. Sadler, I think, would have won the title with several races to spare under the old format.
I like F1's style of "you get a certain number of points from where you finish; nothing more, nothing less" points system. Accumulating points due to final race position has always been the way to go, imo. The "playoffs" have been an interesting concept, but... I hope that soon in the foreseeable future we will see NASCAR go back to what I call the "common sense" format.