Brian France indicates changes coming to Chase For The Sprint Cup format

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Changes to the Chase For The Sprint Cup format could come next year as NASCAR looks for “impact moments” for the sport, NASCAR Chairman Brian France said Friday at Daytona International Speedway.

France’s midseason state of the sport news conference centered on trying to energize the fan base, with the biggest being potential changes to the Chase format.

The Chase began in 2004 and changes were made after 2006 where the number of drivers was increased from 10 to 12 and the reseeding prior to the Chase has been based on victories and not the Chase drivers’ regular-season standing.

Currently, the Chase drivers have their points readjusted to 5,000 and get 10 points for each win prior to the start of the 10-race Chase. But after that, the points system remains the same to determine the champion. France indicated that could change.

“We want to make sure it’s giving us the biggest impact moments it was designed to do,” France said Friday morning. “It is over a 10‑race schedule in itself. Everything to us means pushing the winning envelope to mean what it needs to mean in our sport.

“It’s different because there’s 43 teams, not one or two, two or three, some tournament thing here. We’re in a situation where in some cases winning can’t be possible. So we can’t have a winner‑take‑all, per se, like some of the other playoff systems. On the other hand, we’d like to have it balanced correctly. We’re going to look at that more carefully than ever.”

France did not give details on what those changes may be, although he didn’t rule out eliminations nor a different points system. The number of drivers in the Chase also has been talked about.

“The big design is to have playoff-type moments that only can be, in any sport, created when there’s a lot on the line at any one moment, right?” France said. “That’s what the essence of Game 7s, eliminations and all that are. … We have to balance sort of the body of what you’ve done as a driver across the board.

“So continuity will always be a factor in our playoff-style format. What we’re talking about is enhancing it in a way that will bring out more of the winning moments, the big moments that happen in sports.”

Hendrick Motorsports’ Jimmie Johnson has won the last championship under the original Chase format (where drivers were seeded in 10-point intervals based on their position in the standings after 26 races) and all three of the championships under the current Chase format. He entered last year’s finale with a 108-point edge on Mark Martin. The year before, he had a 141-point edge on Carl Edwards and had an 86-point lead going into the final race over Jeff Gordon in 2007.

Johnson said he would not be favor in a one-race, winner-take-all finale, which he said has been discussed in his meetings with NASCAR.

"They are very serious about making some changes," Johnson said Friday afternoon. "I don't know what that exactly looks like because we talked about minor changes all the way to some very extreme options that they're considering. I don't really know where it's going to end up.

"I know their No. 1 goal is to make it entertaining and exciting. The thing that I keep questioning them on is making sure that it follows the history of our sport and a champion is crowned in a way that respects the past and the past champions. Some of the ideas I've heard are absolutely crazy – it's more of a crapshoot than anything."

France said that while there is talk about changes, the changes might not be as drastic as some of the ideas proposed. He noted that the NCAA tournament discussed changes to increase the field from 65 to 96 but decided just to increase it to 68.

“I believe that we should keep things as simple as possible,” Edwards said. “We should keep them the same. I think that if you change things over and over, and this is just my opinion, but if you constantly change things, then it makes it harder to believe in and feel comfortable with.”

In addition to the Chase, NASCAR has tried to energize its fan base with a new policy of allowing drivers to show more of their personalities and to be allowed to be rougher on the track.

“I like it personally,” France said. “I like the emotion. [The drivers are] a little less worried about what we’re gonna do. They always have the sponsorship stuff.

“It’s not easy for them. They have to be accountable to a company that has a big investment in them.”

In another way to energize the sport, France also said there will be changes coming to the Nationwide Series. He said Cup drivers will be allowed to participate but there needs to be a way to make the series the sport’s version of “college football” where new athletes can create an identity.

“We like Cup drivers racing in the Nationwide Series,” France said. “We need to make sure the stage is not crowded out so much so that we can’t give opportunities to Nationwide young regulars who need that experience.

“And you know what? In my discussions with the Sprint Cup drivers, they agree with us. They think just that way, too. The owners certainly agree with us. So there are going to be some things that we can do.”

France also addressed the following topics:

• On decreased television ratings and race attendance:

France said that the consistent start times – earlier in many cases – likely resulted in a short-term decrease. He said the Olympics and World Cup have also had an impact. Fox saw a ratings dip of 7.1 percent for the first 13 races of the season.

“You do things that are working, but you don’t see [results],” France said. “The answer is because there’s always a number of things that are working against you or for you at any one time. Take this year, we did get the on-track product – we thought the on-track product was pretty good last year.

“There was a perception where it wasn’t. Certainly we have a tendency over many years to at some points in time over-regulate the sport for whatever the reason. We obviously dialed that back. But what we also had was we moved start times back out from where more viewers are back to an earlier start time. We knew that would have a short-term impact until our fan base could get a benefit from sort of a centralized start time for most of the events.”

• On NASCAR’s base fan getting older:

“It is a balance on the core fan, which is a little bit certainly older than that, that you want to satisfy your core fan but you have to do the things that are going to make you as attractive as possible,” France said. “That’s social media to us, which is going to be the great opportunity, one of the great opportunities to reach that young demographic. We’ve got some work to do to improve our effort.”

• On ethanol:

“It will be important for us to evolve the fuel source in the national divisions over time,” France said. “We’ll do that with Sunoco for sure trying to respect and value their set of rights. So we’ll have to put all of that together.

“I don’t know what will happen in ’11. We’re working on a lot of things. But what I can tell you is we will have a very slow, very steady, and sometimes with big impact, but steady march towards this sport looking and feeling and acting more green. We believe that to be the right way and we’ll do that without compromising competition.”