Of the 16 drivers who comprise the newest iteration of the Chase for the Championship, only two of them have competed in the version that predated The Playoffs from 2004-to-2013.
Denny Hamlin
Joey Logano
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On one hand, this gives them both a baseline understanding of how to navigate the next 10 weeks but there are also enough wrinkles that both of them are still curious about what this is going to look like.
The most notable difference from the earliest versions of The Chase to this one is stage racing, which was introduced in 2017. Instead of the championship being decided purely on the finishing order, it will be a combination of points earned during each intermission and the results.
Winning a race has also never paid more with a 20-point difference from first to second.
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In other words, with an emphasis on race-long performance, there are no shortage of opportunities for a lot of ground to be made up or chances to offset a bad race. Hamlin says he is curious how things will have played out after five races.
Denny Hamlin, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Denny Hamlin, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
“That’s over a month from now, and we’re still just going to be halfway,” Hamlin said. “I think everyone’s going to realize pretty quickly this is (much) different format than what we’ve had in the past. We’re going to see a lot of things that we think are huge moments, and they might be in retrospect when you look back. But we won’t know them until the season’s done in Homestead.”
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Logano echoed that sentiment.
“Even though they call it The Chase, it’s still way different than what The Chase was then,” Logano said. “The way the seeding is and the separation through the field, it’s pretty different, and we have stages now too.
“It’s quite a bit different than the old way too. It just has the same name.”
For one, short of Tony Stewart’s incredible run of winning half the final 10 races in 2011, Logano wasn’t going to win from the ninth seed in the previous version of the Chase for the Championship.
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“This is our second wind,” Logano said.
Joey Logano at ‘The Chase Media Day, Team Penske
Joey Logano at ‘The Chase Media Day, Team Penske
Chase Briscoe correctly points out that a run like what Stewart went on in 2011 would likely clinch the championship the week before the finale. Winning means that much now compared to back then.
“If you could win five out of the 10 races this year, I mean, you’re going to clinch before Homestead,” Briscoe said. “You’re going to clinch before Homestead as long as you don’t DNF the other four races before Homestead.
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“So yeah, it’s different now with the added points for winning, and even the stages, it just changes a lot from what it used to be. Maybe there is something to learn from the consistency standpoint but it’s so different I feel like now with the stages and extra points for winning.”
To that point, this is still fundamentally the same concept as NASCAR’s first version of a playoff, in that a championship will be decided by which teams puts together the best 10 race stretch.
Jimmie Johnson won six of those 10, and his success was primarily the reason NASCAR moved away from the Chase for the Championship, but those championships were earned through consistency.
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Chase Elliott said he watched those seasons and admired what his future teammate did.
“You had to be good for all 10 weeks,” Elliott said.
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This is a far cry from the win and you’re in era that defined the following decade after The Chase for the Championship. This format seeded drivers based on their season long performance and will continue to reward or punish based on what happens over the entirety of the final 10.
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“I think it’s more in line with that traditional year-long format,” Elliott said. “It’s not obviously, but it is more in line with that. And 10 weeks is a long time and things can change quick. … I look at certainly the dominance of Jimmie … They just executed at a high level, went to tracks that they were just far superior at and were able to piece together 10 really good weeks.
“But each one of those years were a little different. They had battles right down to the wire some years and had battles that he was pretty well done before they got to Homestead and others.”
Hamlin said this format is considerably more just than the one that literally just bit him last year.
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“I certainly think that all of them would tell you it’s a more fair way to do it,” Hamlin said. “It’s not the 36 races that some of the old guys were really pushing for. I certainly would have loved the 36 races as it stood now, but we could not have predicted this, predicted the future.
“But, I’m fine with it. We got a great schedule ahead of us and I think that this is certainly such a giant leap forward in crowning a champion from what we’ve had.”
Similarly, Christopher Bell praised this format for having ‘no gimmicks’ and ‘no games.’
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“It’s just literally 10 races,” Bell said. “Go out there and perform well every single week or perform as good as you can every week. Before there were kind of these – if you have a bad race or a bad track, it’s like, okay, just survive this track and make your points up at this other track, and then we’re going to get a reset whereas we don’t have that anymore.”
Logano called the final 10 races under this format ‘hell’ in the pressure that it places on contenders.
“10 races of hell, Jimmie Johnson said that one time, and it’s pretty true,” Logano said. “It’s a grueling 10 weeks but it’s a pretty cool trophy at the end of it, you know what I mean? The feeling of winning the whole thing is worth the grind all day long.
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“With that in mind, it’s not that hard to motivate yourself when you know the prize and how awesome it is. You have to keep grinding. The agony of defeat hurts, and hurts more, but chasing it is worth the price.”
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