We’re halfway through quirky, non-traditional playoff season in Atlanta. Quirky as in there’s more to the format than simply winning or losing. Some math is involved. And who doesn’t like a little light addition?
We’ve just lived through another Tour Championship at East Lake, where PGA Tour golf goes to finish off its brief but spectacularly profitable playoffs. That one featured a bizarro-world handicap system in which it’s the best players, not the worst, who get strokes. Champion Scottie Scheffler started that one at 10 under before he even picked up the keys to his courtesy car. Being him just gets better and better.
Next up, this Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the Quaker State 400 falls at the beginning of NASCAR’s 10-race chase to a championship. Next year they’ll run earlier in the summer in Atlanta and miss this window. So, it behooves us now to get acquainted with how the car fights do their postseason.
There’ll be an anticipated field of 38 cars in this Sunday’s race, but only 16 of them are qualified to run for the championship. The rest is slightly less motivated traffic. It’s like the Falcons getting to run around on the field while the Chiefs and Ravens are locked in a divisional playoff game.
The Quaker State 400 is the first of three races in NASCAR’s Round of 16. The chase field is cut to 12 cars for the next three races; then cut to eight for the next three; then to a final four in the championship race in Phoenix on Nov. 10. Whoever finishes first among those four is the champ.
Race winners throughout the year automatically made this Round of 16 coming to AMS. There were 14 distinct winners this regular season, leaving the other two spots to be filled on the basis of regular season points.
The points are reset here at the start of the playoffs, with each of the top 16 starting at a base of 2,000. Then each driver gets added points for his work during the season – for where he finished in regular-season points (the points leader gets 15 points and it scales downward from there), for race wins (five each) and for stage wins (one each). Added to whatever points he may earn in each playoff race. Kyle Larson is atop the standings with 2,040 points, Christopher Bell second at 2,032 and Tyler Reddick third at 2,028.
If one of the Round of 16 drivers wins at Atlanta, he will be assured a spot in the next round. Otherwise, the Round of 12 will be set by points.
Like golf, stock car racing has nervously fiddled with its playoff format over the years, struggling to find a workable compromise between rewarding consistency during the season and keeping up the competitive interest until the end.
There had been some crushing anti-climaxes in the age of strictly points-based championships. As in 1995, back when Atlanta was the last stop on the schedule, and Jeff Gordon came here with such a huge points lead he could have run the race in reverse and still won the title (he finished 32nd the day he won his first of four championships).
The chase format was born after a 2003 season in which Matt Kenseth won but one race during the year, but was so monotonously consistent every other week that he was crowned champion at the end. Looking up at him were such multiple race winners as Ryan Newman (eight wins), Kurt Busch (four) and Jimmie Johnson (three) and Gordon (three).
It was bound to get a little quirkier after that.
Gentlemen, start your calculators.
