Fan's Eye View ~ Eliminations Nothing New To Dover Or NASCAR9/26/2014 |
On Sunday, September 28th at about 6:00 PM or so,
the hopes of securing the 2014 Sprint Cup Series Championship will end for four
unfortunate or undeserving drivers and their respective teams. As it is the third race in The Chase for the
Sprint Cup Championship, Dover has the distinction of being the first
“knockout” race which will eliminate four drivers from Championship contention,
leaving only twelve to remain to duke it out for the spoils. Of course, we all know that after three more
races, four more will go, and then three more races will decide the fate of the
remaining eight drivers, and determine who will fight for first and who will
fight for fifth. Just as some fans may not embrace the concept of the Chase
itself, some consider the concept of elimination unnecessary, contrived, and
even tacky. However, before the Chase
was even thought of, eliminations were occurring in NASCAR all the time towards
the end of each season, and the September race at Dover, because of its date
late in the season, has certainly played a role in those eliminations. If you watch baseball or basketball, any sport with a large
number of games played per season, actually, you’ll hear the term “magic
number.” The magic number is given to a
team when it is calculable for a team, no matter what any opponent does, to win
a certain number of games to clinch a league or division championship, or even
a spot in the playoffs. If a team’s
magic number is eight, and that team wins its next game, the magic number drops
to seven, and if the nearest opponent loses, the magic number would drop by an
additional game. NASCAR has magic
numbers as well. Consider this: The
maximum number of points a driver can score in a race is 48. That’s 43 for winning, 1 for leading a lap,
one for leading the most laps, and the three point bonus for winning. Let us assume that a driver is 97 points
behind the point leader with two races remaining. The maximum number of points that a driver
could score in those two races would be 96, so therefore, if our driver is 97
points behind with two races to go, he is mathematically eliminated from
Championship contention. So, to figure
out the magic number, it is the number of races remaining multiplied by 48, the
maximum number of points which can be scored. If you really think about it, can you name a driver in the
history of the elite series of NASCAR, who, with seven races remaining, came
from thirteenth place or worse in the standings and went onto challenge, let
alone win the Championship? And could
you name a driver who, with four races remaining, came from ninth place or
worse, or a driver with one race left in fifth place or worse, have a realistic
chance of winning the Championship? Before someone shouts out “But what about 1992!?”, admit two things: One, 1992 was a magical year for a
Championship battle, and two, it was an anomaly. The odds of that story unfolding as it did
were obviously one-in-something, but the “something” had to have been an
unbelievable figure. Alan Kulwicki,
after Dover in 1992, was in 4th place, 278 points behind then leader
Bill Elliott. In six races, Kulwicki was able to take advantage of some bad
luck and great calculations to overtake Elliott for the 1992 Winston Cup
Championship. Truly a great story, but
one, even without the current system, we’d be likely not to see again. Some folks “hate” on NASCAR for legitimate reasons, and others do it just to do it, while others toe
the NASCAR line as if they worked for the company itself. Those who are not the latter, and buck NASCAR
just because of change, should be sure to do it for the right reason. What NASCAR has done with the Chase this
year, adding in multiple knockouts/eliminations, has just made something
official that has been happening numerically and automatically since the sport
was created.
Feel free to leave comments below, and be sure to follow me @RaceFansJim on Twitter, because sometimes I give stuff away!