The NASCAR Cup Series has had over a dozen ways to decide a champion in its history. The most famous having come in the series’ modern era over the past near 50 year history. With the controversial NASCAR Playoffs being the current way many have looked back at specific systems to see who would win and when. Today we will do that as well with all of them and see who would win the NASCAR championship under every system.
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48 comments
What is your favorite NASCAR points system?
The highest score point for Playoffs.
Winston format, and 10-man Chase from 2004
The Winston cup points format that was employed from 1975-2003
The revised Latford system from 2007, with 185 instead of 175 points for winner. I revised it again just for fun, with 190 points for the winner, 175 points for second place and the rest like the Latford system. So race winner can get up to 200 points, if he lead most laps in the race. A nice round number.
I really like the Winston format but the current playoff system at the same time
This William Byron fella was pretty good this year, would be a shame if someone didn’t pick him to make the playoffs in their preseason predictions…
Could be worse. I had Blaney missing the playoffs this year and he went out and won the whole damn title.
With only 2 wins: Talladega and Phoenix
@S.KullRandomwhat about the coke 600
@Nuhad Farzan Oh, right, forgot about that one. Fox was so CRINGE this year
Byron coming back from the greenhouse penalty to win the championship in Winston points is impressive. Loved Blaney winning the title but hate the system.
Blame Matt Kenseth for 20 years of dealing with this nonsense
@S.KullRandom blame Brian France. Kenseth was just doing his job.
@S.KullRandomWhy should I blame Kenseth for fairly winning under the most proper system?? I blame Penske and Newman for DNF’ing so much despite 6 wins, so Penske whined to Nascar to force this whole playoff nonsense
TLDR: Byron had a phenomenal championship season that will never count due to an asinine sensationalist playoff system.
Many other championship formats speak the truth of this statement.
Pretty much. And this is all Matt Kenseth’s fault for bring the Winston points down with an asinine season 20 years ago. A different champion would have been crowned 2 weeks ago
@S.KullRandomNot Kenseth’s fault; he did ehat he had to do. This is on Brian France and those who were around him as well as Steve Phelps and those in charge right now for not preventing it and changing it, respectively.
The IndyCar points system has the advantage that the gaps between the front ranks are slightly larger. A driver who improves from 5th to 4th place gains more points than a driver who improves from 15th to 14th place.
For the record, I prefer the Winston Cup format used from 1975-2003 or any similar season-long points system.
But if a playoff system is mandatory, then a ten-driver “chase for the championship” shootout is probably the fairest. Sixteen drivers are too many. I would also do away with the “win and you’re in.” Two wins should lock you in. And I’d have only one reset of points at the beginning of the chase. No eliminations. Whoever scores the most points in the “chase” is the champion.
The current format with a championship final race has one huge inherent flaw: One could (theoretically) win the first 35 races and still enter the championship final on an equal footing with three other drivers.
Put another way, currently if one wins the first 35 races, he/she still faces a 75% of not being the champion.
There’s something wrong with a system that could produce that result.
The Latford system also has a major flaw: Mathematically speaking, it’s possible to win a championship without a single top ten finish. If you finish eleventh every race and lead one lap under caution each race, you’ll get 135 points every race. In years where no one is particularly consistent (2002 and 2022 come to mind), that would be enough.
A ridiculous scenario to be sure, but so is the idea of anyone winning 35 races.
Without a doubt the Latford system isn’t perfect, as you point out. It rewards getting a points lead and then driving defensively to protect it. In other words, why risk going for a win when you can finish, say, ninth and then move on? But the one thing it does reward is consistency. And if that is the metric one uses to define the best driver of the year, then it works remarkably well.
Imo it should be a season long thing, but with the current points system. Do stage points as well, but get rid of stage cautions.
And if they really feel the need (even though there isn’t) to make some sort of playoff, I agree on a ten driver chase-like system. I’d keep the points system and stage points without cautions, and wouldn’t do any sort of “win and you’re in” crap; the top ten in points make it, and if someone outside the top ten close enough to the leader they get added as well, similar to the 400 point thing in the OG Chase. The points are completely re-set and the top 10 is tied, while whoever got in on the “close enoygh to 1st without being in the top 10” gets re-set to that points distance (for example, if the top 10 gets put at 4000 points and the 11th guy was 42 behind the leader, then he’ll be re-set at 3958 points). And then it’s a race till the end.
the system now is to get a gm car to be the champ ONLY
@Ben Longsure and that worked pretty good huh
The latford is my favorite. But now a close 2nd cause I hate this playoff format is the original 10 man chase. I wish they would go back to that it’s the right balance of consistency, fairness and entertainment.
Hey, Iceberg! Have you ever thought about doing a video on who would be champion in the pre-modern era if NASCAR used the Latford system from the start? That was something I’ve wondered about ever since I saw nascarman history’s video on NASCAR’s different point systems. Would Richard Petty have more than 7 championships or would he lose one of his championships?
Petty would lose ’72 and ’74 to Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough respectively, but he’d take ’63 from Weatherly.
Other noteworthy differences:
Lee Petty wins 1949 (and 1950 if you ignore the ridiculous penalty)
Fonty Flock would win 1951 over Herb Thomas.
Rex White would win ’61 over Ned Jarrett.
And Cale wins 1973 over Benny Parsons (actually Benny falls to third behind Petty).
Most changes involve who ends up in the top ten in points, since guys who only ran a handful of races would frequently get good point finishes from a great day at Darlington or something like that. The Latford system first and foremost rewards drivers who show up every week, so guys like Herman Beam and Wendell Scott tend to get much better point finishes than they really got.
@Sean Nolan Thanks for the info!
I’m pretty surehe did a whole video series on this
@The Great Baron O Beef DipThat was doing the playoff system in older seasons (mainly the Chase era and a few years before it).
The thing that’s pretty obvious when you look at all these formats and think about his results through the year; William Byron deserved the championship title this season. That’s hilarious with the Mario Kart points system.
I actually agree with you. In fact, he should’ve won the regular season championship DESPITE the fact that both William Byron and Martin Truex Jr. tied in points for the regular season (if you include bonus points).
I want to see the 2011-2013 format come back. Those three years had some of the most intriguing championship battles in my opinion. Especially with Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart ending up tied for the 2011 championship. The 2012 championship battle between Brad Keselowski and Jimmie Johnson was exciting as well.
The system was exposed in the very first year by Ryan Newman. He didn’t win a single race all year, and even worse, he only led 41 laps the entire season. He finished 2nd in the championship by one point.
I still don’t like 2011 with Stewart/Edwards. I’d rather have co-champions than a tie-breaker used. Edwards was just as deserving, if not more, than Stewart.
@jek 48thinking of the 2014-2016 chase grid buddy, hes talking about the wild card chase format
“This is just a hypothetical situation i know the racing would been different” – Classic quote for Iceberg
I have to admit that I’m one of those people who’s at least curious what would happen in other formats. I’m torn on having any sort of “playoffs” in NASCAR. On one hand, it feels like the best driver misses out on a championship sometimes. On the other, at least we don’t have what’s happening in F1 with Max already crowned the champion with multiple races left in the season… It’s hard having a good system for any sport, and the best person/team doesn’t always win it all at the end of a season sadly. I’m happy for Ryan Blaney, but I still feel bad for William Byron because him and his team were the best all season, just coming up short in one race, so I kind of wish they would have it be multiple races at the end instead of “one and done” for a championship, maybe even have it open up to more than just 4 drivers at the end. Other than that, I’m okay with the points system and playoffs since it is more exciting to watch every week like this.
I will always prefer the Winston Cup format but I also liked the wild card format. I believe the wild card format should make a return.
You should take a look at Alex Palou’s dominant 2023 season in IndyCar. His average finish was 3.7 this season.
I’d love to see this done for every season since 2004.
He has.
@The Great Baron O Beef DipThat was the opposite; he did 04 to 2016 with the current thing. He also made 2012 without playoffs as well.
I prefer the Winston points system, seems more fitting to reward a champion being consistent over some hot streak (Cough Jeff Gordon vs JJ 2007)
Also the ‘playoffs’ are just some gimmick to me to get more TV ratings, fitting that ever since they got rid of the old system the ratings took a huge hit.
For sure, Jimmie has mostly artificial titles
I’d love to see someone do this for the F1 and IndyCar points
One points system that could be used since I usually don’t see it around is the IMSA points format. I’m definitely am gonna have to try to use it and keep up with it for next year since I kinda don’t have the time and energy to go through all of this year to figure it out. But I think it’ll be interesting given how many points r awarded for IMSA. The system goes like this, ya get points for both qualifying and the race. Once qualifying is done points r awarded like this:
1st-35
2nd-32
3rd-30
4th-28
5th-26
6th-25
7th-24
8th-23
9th-22
10th-21
11th-20
12th-19
13th-18
14th-17
15th-16
16th-15
17th-14
18th-13
19th-12
20th-11
21st-10
22nd-9
23rd-8
24th-7
25th-6
26th-5
27th-4
28th-3
29th-2
30th-1
Once the race is concluded points r awarded like this:
1st-350
2nd-320
3rd-300
4th-280
5th-260
6th-250
7th-240
8th-230
9th-220
10th-210
11th-200
12th-190
13th-180
14th-170
15th-160
16th-150
17th-140
18th-130
19th-120
20th-110
21st-100
22nd-90
23rd-80
24th-70
25th-60
26th-50
27th-40
28th-30
29th-20
30th-10
I’m old fashioned. I would love to see the Winston Cup points format come back. Granted I’ve warmed up current system, but 2023 would’ve been an exciting year to have the WC format. Plus, the WC favors consistency the most of all systems (my opinion) and I think that’s who the championship should go to at the end of the day.