NASCAR's Chase compared to other playoffs

Unlike other major leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, et al.) that only focus on the teams that make it (said teams are the only ones that play too), NASCAR’s Chase is far different. Not only do the drivers in the Chase race, but also, those who were eliminated. Why do eliminated drivers and those in the Chase both race (in other words, why do they race whether in or out)? I would have thought that the Chase drivers would be the only ones who raced, because they were the ones who made it.

Because every driver has a fan base - not just the ones in the Chase.

Also, there’s quite a bit of money involved in every race, plus the opportunity to qualify for next year’s Gatorade Shootout (by winning the pole) or All-Star Race (by winning the race).

What league orders regular season games between two teams who have no chance of making the postseason cancelled? In that way, NASCAR’s Chase is like other major leagues.

The only problem I have with the Chase is, the Cup winner can be decided in part by someone not involved, by finishing between the top two drivers in the points and affecting the final result. (Figure skating used to have this problem, where skater A was ahead of skater B after both of them skate, then C skates, and B ends up winning.) I think it would be better if the Chase races were scored without taking the non-Chase drivers into account.

An other reason to have the non-chase drivers to still compete is that it would be rather boring to watch a race with only 12(13) cars racing.

The aim of the chase format was to make the racing more interesting, not to make it boring.

I believe the NHRA has a similar format now for drag races, do they not?

For NASCAR, I would say that the Chase format is designed to determine the best 12* drivers in the course of a season where they are racing in a field of 42 drivers–past of that includes dealing with lapped traffic, recovering from a speeding penalty that drops you to 37th and having to work back through traffic, etc.

So having 12*-car races would result in them racing in significantly different conditions during the playoffs than they had during the rest of the season.

And it fails miserably at that goal, IMO.

Indeed it does! NASCAR has never been one of my favorite things to look at; it’s worse now.

NASCAR was one of my favorite things to look at before the Chase was instated; now I care about it as much as I care about the Kazakhstan Midget-Only Senior Citizen Curling League.

ETA: Actually, the KMOSCCL would be more fun than NASCAR. Anyone know if they have a website? :smiley:

I still watch it, but The Chase is ridiculous. Hopefully it dies when Brian France leaves. I don’t see him sticking around until he dies, like his dad and grandfather did.

So? With the right perspective that could be a strength. You’ve seen them race one way all year, the standings show the results, now see the best of the season tested against each other in a different way. A driver has to excel at both to win a championship.

Why do football teams play games when they’re already mathematically eliminated?

Why do the Cubs even bother playing at all?

Because it’s still the regular season, not the playoffs. They don’t play in the playoffs.

Of course, in football, unlike in auto racing, the whole league doesn’t play on the same field at the same time, which makes things rather different.

I can’t help you there.

I am under the impression that the aim of the Chase was to prevent somebody from pretty much locking up the Cup championship before the last race.

IROC races only had 12 drivers; were they that boring? Okay, having them race in identical (except for color) cars didn’t help.

Yes. Apparently, the top ten have their points reset to 2110 for first, 2080 for second, 2070 for third, 2060 for fourth, and so on down to 2000 for tenth.

(The quick version of the points system: 10 for just showing up; the top 3 times in each of the four qualifying sessions get 3, 2, 1 respectively; the 16 qualifiers get anywhere from 21 to 28 points; 20 points for each race win (the event winner will have won 4 races); 20 points for setting a new elapsed time record (if you can show it wasn’t a fluke by having another run at the same event that’s no more than 1% slower).)

Golf does the same thing as well, with its “FedEx Championship”.

Exactly to my point, it was felt by Nascar that many fans lost interest in the final races when the season champion was already determined.

I found IROC very exciting, but it was also very different, in addition to identical cars, they had what was considered the best drivers from different forms of racing where the result was basically “The Winner takes all” which often led to some awesome end of race events.

It only looked like Nascar and there was usually as many Nascar drivers as all the others combined which favored that a Nascar driver would win.