Racing
I t's a new year, but I still hate the Chase for the Championship. NASCAR isn't a stick-and-ball sport, so it didn't need to try to reinvent itself by adding a playoff. The ostensible reason was that, too often under the old system, the championship was decided well before the last race was run. Guess what? That's still happening. The real, and wrong, reason the Chase was created was to appease the TV suits, who were tired of los-ing their Sunday viewers to football in the fall. They thought if they could advertise their races as a play-off, they could pry a few eyes from the gridiron. That hasn't worked out. Part of the problem is that the 48 team has this Chase thing licked. Good for them, but bad for the fans and TV networks. NASCAR is obviously commit-ted to the Chase, so I've resigned myself to dealing with this faux faceoff. But I do have some sugges-tions on how it can be improved. RetuRn to 10 When the Chase started, only 10 drivers made the cut. Then Jeff Gor-don and Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't make it in, so NASCAR expanded the field. Bad idea. It was obvious that the change was made as a knee-jerk reaction to two popular drivers missing out. Any pretense that the so-called playoff was legitimate vanished when NASCAR expanded it. So go back to the top 10. If Junior or Jeff or Jimmie (yeah, right!) misses out, it's just one of them racing deals. Let winneRs in Is 10 not enough cars? Then let's include everyone who wins a regu-lar-season race. NASCAR finally acknowledged that fans (and competitors) value wins by increasing the points awarded for a win. And the number of wins count even more when it comes to Chase seeding. But this season, two of the big-gest winners and most compelling racers were on the verge of missing the Chase. Mark Martin made it. Kyle Busch didn't. NASCAR lucked out with Mark. Even though he had four wins as the cutoff neared, he was in dan-ger of not getting in. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the oldest driver and big fan favorite got a chance in this career-reviving It's Time to Change the Chase If you can't beat 'em, make 'em better. Here are some ways that NASCAR can improve its Chase for the Championship playoff system Views from the Grandstands kay bell bobby labonte gets a 2010 ride. The former NASCAR champ will drive for TRG Motorsports on a full-time basis. It's been sad to see my fellow Texan's trouble finding employment. What's the deal? Labonte has a Cup trophy on his shelf and by all accounts is a decent fellow. Are teams so cash-strapped that they're opting for rookies with smaller salary demands instead of a proven winner? While TRG isn't a top-tier team, its performances steadily improved over the course of last sea-son. And at least Labonte will start the coming season with a bit of certainty, or as much as any racer can hope for. formula 1 racer Jarno trulli looking ahead to nasCar. The Italian who drove in 2009 for Team Toyota spent time with Michael Waltrip Racing at last fall's Phoenix race. Trulli watched his first-ever NASCAR events from the Sprint Cup garages and checked in with former F1 colleague Juan Pablo Montoya. While Trulli, who has a home in Miami, still plans to drive in F1 for a while, he said he would like to leave the door open to a possible NAS-CAR future. When you come here and see how many people come to watch these series, you understand, you realize there's so much interest around, Trulli told . Autosport.com So it's really a professional top series, especially for America. Hmmm. Especially for America. Jarno, I realize English isn't your native tongue and things are often lost in translation, but if you ever do make the move to NASCAR, one of your first tasks better be hiring a PR agent. speaking of for-mula 1, its operatic off-track machinations are almost as enter-taining as watching the cars race. Take, for instance, the shakeup in the 2009 F1 championship team. mercedes-benz pur-chased a majority stake in brawn GP, which took the series 2009 manu-facturer and driving titles. But that momentous move was soon eclipsed by Mercedes' decision not to resign reigning champ Jensen Button. Instead, the company decided that instead of a Brit behind the wheel, it prefers Nico Rosberg as its lead driver. Britain's Daily Mirror newspa-per reported that Mercedes would consider it a marketing coup at home if its new team were to win the world title with the German Rosberg. so why is the changing of a driver such big deal? The NASCAR analogy would be Hendrick Motorsports wins the Sprint Cup, Detroit-based Chevrolet buys Hen-drick, Chevy fires California native Jimmie Johnson and puts good Mid-western driver Matt Kenseth in the 48. loose lUGnUts 36 trUCkers news January 2010 Jimmie Johnson holds up four fingers to signify his unprecedented four consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championships.