re: NASCAR race today

quote:

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Yarborough, Junior Johnson, Petty, Earnhardt, Wallace, Gordon, etc, didnt need playoffs. They won their championships without do overs.

Jimmie's the one that needs playoffs.

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True, they didn't reset the points at a certain period of time, but even the "old" points system in NASCAR wasn't really all that old. When Winston first came in to sponsor the sport back in the late 70s, there were only certain events that paid points toward the Winston Cup, so a driver could pick and choose events to run in and still win, or finish well in, the Cup standings. Before that, NASCAR would run multiple events a week, you might see the Grand National Division (now Sprint Cup) run on Friday night at Pickens, Saturday night at Lakewood and Sunday at Martinsville. Again, drivers could pick and choose to run tracks that suited them the best and rack up points because very few teams had the resources (or cars/motors) to be able to run all three races in a weekend.

The amazing thing is, if you reran the seasons from '75 through 2003 using the chase system you would have the same champion either way on a great number of occasions.

As for JJ owing his career to Gordon, I think he would have eventually made it to Cup and been successful, but not to the level he has been. Look at his history of running in the Busch series. He didn't have spectacular results, and he wasn't in the greatest of rides. Jeff saw something in him and went to Hendrick and said "sign him," and Rick did. Put him in the best equipment with the best resources, and he has been unstoppable. If you had put him in a Roush car he could easily have done the same. But, given his resume up until the point that HMS signed him, he didn't have the resume to garner a top notch ride. If he had moved in to Cup with say Hall of Fame Racing or Michael Waltrip Racing, or even DEI I don't think you have him as the 4 time defending champion.