Fan's Eye View ~ Will Winners Race Or Just Keep Pace?
3/3/2014
Jim Fitzgerald
With the instatement of the new rules of the Sprint Cup Series in regards to making the Chase For The Championship when the fall race at Richmond has concluded, some inquiries have arisen which question whether or not a driver who has won in the series will continue to try to win more races.
The rules for gaining entry to the Chase for the Championship state that the top sixteen drivers ranked by wins will enter the Chase, providing those drivers have attempted to qualify for each race and are in the top thirty in points. One variance includes a place for the Sprint Cup Series points leader after Richmond should he or she not have scored a victory. Another includes a stipulation where any drivers tied in win totals with the driver in the sixteenth position will be ranked and placed according to the points accrued throughout the season. One addition variance would be if there were not 16 or more individual winners in the first twenty-six races of the season. The remaining Chase positions would be filled by the highest point scorers without wins.
Once a driver and team win a race in the regular season, they will be awarded a sticker to place on the car. (You can see this sticker to the right, as well as where it will be placed.) Now that we have all of that settled and hopefully understood, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Kevin Harvick have won at Daytona and Phoenix, respectively, the question which is now flowing from the lips of fans everywhere is: “Well, now that (insert Driver’s name here) has won a race and is basically assured of getting into the Chase, do the driver and team slack off and relax, knowing that they have an almost sure position in the Chase, do they experiment and try some different things in preparation for later in the season, or do they go full force and try to win as much as possible?
An interesting question, indeed.
If we were to weigh the pros and cons of each, there would be advantages, and probably disadvantages to each of those methods.
The “Relax” Method
The first negative impact of this method would be that it
might throw a driver and a team out of a normal rhythm. No longer trying to win and running at less
than normal levels of performance would be something that most teams would not
be used to doing. A team who doesn’t
push is probably not going to win many more, if any races, and therefore not
accrue any bonus points to be used when setting the Chase field after
Richmond. Conversely, not punishing the
equipment week in and week out means there are probably more resources left to
use when it really counts. Saving up
until the end of the season might give a team a competitive advantage. This would perhaps be the best method for an
underfunded team which found an unexpected win, such as Talladega or Daytona.
The Experiment Method
This is an interesting concept. With a win in the books, it might be time to try some new things. For example, if a driver wins before the spring race at Dover, a 400 mile test session at the Monster Mile might better prepare a team and driver for the fall race at the one mile concrete oval, which is the final race of the Challenger round of the Chase. This would also work with Martinsville, Charlotte, or any other track in the Chase which also has a race earlier in the season. Did Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and the No. 88 team, with a win under their belts, use Phoenix as attest session to learn something for the next to last race of the season? Did it work? The negative aspect of this method, of course, is if it doesn’t work, and now not only was one race wasted, another could be ruined, along with any possible chance of winning the Championship that season. This method might be best employed by a middle tier team who can pull off a win, maybe two per year, but is not a top contender for each race, each week.
The All Out Method
In an interview after the Daytona 500, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. stated that they can now “go for the jugular,” which sounds like he and the team are going to go all out every week and try to win as many races as they possibly can, regardless of the circumstances or results. The positive aspects of this method are simple. More wins, more money, more confidence, and a higher rank after the reset when the Chase begins. However, on the flip side, you may be looking at a few more wrecked race cars, maybe some fuel gambles which don’t quite work out, and very possibly a few less friends in the garage. This method would probably best be used by a top tier team which will have more opportunities to push the envelope and go for the win instead of settling for a “good points day.”
At the end of the day, no matter which team employs which style of racing, it should be entertaining, and there will no doubt be a point where even more strategy comes into play. Imagine a team with no wins, but in the top twenty-ish in points. Depending on how many other race winners there have been in the season, with two or three races left in the regular season, the strategy may change. You may see a team back off from trying to “win to get in,” and instead try to run just well enough to be the team with no wins, but still with enough points to still grab a Chase position. Or, you may see a team with no hope of making the Chase on points do something completely insane to try to win a race to get in. The scenarios are endless, especially at this early point of the season, but the journey to get to the Chase should be interesting.