As we all know it’s playoff time again and with it comes what seems like a yearly discussion about it. Everywhere you look there’s talk about how the format is confusing, the old formats were better/worse, that we’re better off going back to the Latford system (which NASCAR used from 1975 until 2003). So I decided that today we would take a look back at the points systems of days past going back to the beginning of the modern era and see how those points systems would shake up more recent seasons had NASCAR never changed from them.
Championships Determined By Miles Driven:
From 1968-1973 NASCAR points were determined by race length, from 1968-1971 if a race was 250 miles or less the winner was awarded 50 points. If the race was between 251 and 399 miles long the winner was awarded 100 points. If a race was 400 miles or more the winner was awarded 150 points. If you think that’s confusing, in 1972-1973 points were awarded based on laps completed and the size of the track they were completed on. This was combined with the points awarded per race changing to a flat 100 points per race for the winner (125 in 1973). I’ve included a small table to illustrate how many points were awarded:
Track Size Points Awarded
< 1 mile 0.25
1 mile 0.50
1.3 miles 0.70
1.5 miles 0.75
2 miles 1.00
2.5 miles 1.25
This system does seem to award drivers for completing the full distance of scheduled events. This combined with the shortening of the schedule from 48 to 31 races and establishing a minimum length of 250 miles per event is what’s recognized as the start of the “modern era” in 1972.
The championship that year came down to Richard Petty and Bobby Allison with Petty winning by a mere 128 points over Allison. Even though Allison had two more wins than Petty and only one less top-10 finish through 31 races Petty drove 195.17 more miles than Allison and that was enough to put Petty ahead of Allison for the championship.
Now for the fun part, let’s take that points system and apply it to the 2021 season, where the driver who drove the most miles was Denny Hamlin. Where did the actual champion Kyle Larson rank in miles driven? 13th place. Now was that enough for Denny to win a championship under this old format? Well, let’s set a few quick parameters for this hypothetical. The average track length in NASCAR is 1.7 miles, according to our table from earlier that means that each mile driven is equal to roughly .75 points. This is the formula I will be using for simplicity’s sake as this is just a hypothetical.
So under this format, Hamlin finishes with 508.7 more miles driven than Larson, but is that enough to overcome Larson’s 10 wins? Well no, with each win being worth 100 points Larson is still able to win by a gap of 492.9475 points over Hamlin even with the huge discrepancy in miles driven, a truly dominant season by Larson in any format. But imagine how much different that year would have been having to count miles every week. Now let’s move into the next category.
Championships Determined by Money
NASCAR championships before 1968 were determined by prize money, however with those being before the “modern era” I would like to focus on 1974. 1974 was the only year in the modern era where points were earned based on race winnings. Contingency awards were not included in this total. The total winnings were multiplied by the races attempted and divided by 1,000 to determine the final number of points earned. Despite having nearly equal statistical seasons Richard Petty won the championship over Cale Yarborough by 567 points with a 2,649-point gap to David Pearson in third who only ran 19 of the 30 events that year.
Now we will look at a modern example. We have to go back a few years because NASCAR hasn’t publicly released winnings since 2015. As such let’s return to 2015 to see how things might have shaken out differently under this format. In the real world, Kyle Busch came back from a leg injury at Daytona, won his way into the playoffs, and won the championship over Kevin Harvick even after missing 11 races.
In this reality he isn’t quite as lucky, The top-five in points under the 1974 format are as follows.
1. Harvick: $11,730,460 earned
Point total: 422,296.56
2. Logano: $9,663,863 earned
Points total: 347,899.068
3. Johnson: $8,152,877 earned
Points total: 293,503.572
4. Gordon: $7,614,469 earned
Points total: 274,120.884
5. Keselowski: $7,477,096 earned
Points total: 269,175.456
Now where did Kyle Busch finish in this format? Well, he finished 12th behind Carl Edwards having earned $8,393,925 and finishing with 209,848.125 points.
As I’m sure you’ve heard before these examples are all hypothetical and they would’ve likely raced differently under a different set of rules. For that same reason, I won’t be getting into the Latford system today. There have been countless examples of even the current season standings under this format. It is what has been referred to by many as the last representation of who’s best over an entire season.
Now I’m not here to speak to you about which format is the best because I believe it is simply a matter of personal preference. However, I think we have learned today that no matter what has happened in the past NASCAR is no stranger to changing things up to better represent the current day and age of the sport as a whole.
Photo credit: LAT Photographic
pitboxpress.com 