Point Systems

[Woody]

I've had point systems on my mind for awhile now. I think with the changes (most notably to NASCAR) to various motorsports point systems over time, we all have in at least some way.

So I think this could be an interesting conversation.

There's a lot of things this could touch on....
-Should there be bonus points?
-Should everyone in the race receive points?
-Playoffs and stages? (obviously this comes up for NASCAR)

...but the one I'd like to use to start this conversation is...
Should the winner of the race score the most championship points per race?

I think the answer is yes.

NASCAR wants to do playoffs, I have accepted that. And I think the current system they use, since we are doing playoffs, is pretty much the best it could be. My only real problem is that the winner of a race does not always score the most points, in fact, many times - the winner does not score the most points in a given race. (To be fair, there is something to be said about how the winner gets an automatic playoff berth and the playoff points from winning do contribute to a seeding system - I think that does work well.)

A good example is the 2018 Coke Zero Sugar 400 (Daytona summer).
Erik Jones won the race, scored no stage points, and lead only the final lap. He scored 40 points.
Kasey Kahne finished 4th, finished 4th in the second stage (+7 stage points), and lead 17 laps. He also scored 40 points.
And then there's Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., who finished 17th, but won both stages (+20 points) and lead 51 laps. He scored 40 points.
Everyone else scored 37 points or less.

An important point: Stenhouse finished 1 lap down and was the 4th to last car running out of the 40 that started.

I don't think there's any circumstance (excluding penalties) where a driver who finishes 4th should score the same number of championship points as the winner of the race. I think you can imagine how I feel about the 17th-place finisher scoring the same number of points as the winner.

Regardless of the system used, I think the race winner should always score the most points in that race (but for a penalty of some kind).

What do you all think?

[The_Wall_91]

I agree with the point that no matter what the system used is, that the race winner should get the most points for the race. The problem is that with NASCAR's current system, that is very challenging to do unless the winner of the race completely dominates the whole race. Unless the points given to each position substantially increases, then you are gonna keep having examples like you mentioned.

[Woody]

Another angle: should each win be worth the same amount of points?

This hasn't been a thing in NASCAR since before 1975. At different times, the amount of points awarded for a race was determined either by mileage or the race's purse...

There are forms of racing where certain races are double points events. F1 tried it for the season-finale in 2014 and it was an unpopular move. Since 2015, IndyCar's championship included double points for the Indy 500 and the season finale and that seems to be more accepted.


I'm wondering about this in a different sense... Does the car count in the race make a difference? Should a race with 30 cars be worth the same amount of points for the winner as a race with 40 cars?

[SpeedDemon37]

It's a completely subjective opinion, but I don't think that the points payout should change for every car entered. With a fixed payout, it's the last-place finishers who will "luck out" and score more points when the race has a smaller starting field. But if the points changed depending on the car count, then it's the winners who would luck out in races with larger starting fields. I'd prefer that the win not be more/less rewarding based on that factor.

I really like the idea of double-points races, so long as there's some general reason as to why the race is special enough to warrant it (not even a good one or a specific one necessarily; I guess I just mean that it would be weird if the specific double-points races were purely random). Historic races, long races, unique races, etc. I'm not a big fan of doubling points for the finale purely for the sake of the title fight, although I suppose that it would be just as easy to say that the season-ending race is always special by nature and use that to justify making it worth more points.

I love what IndyCar did in 2014 with their triple-crown of historic (loose use of the term for Fontana, but close enough) 500-mile races. Even though all three tracks were superspeedways, open-wheel superspeedway racing is a challenge completely unique to IndyCar. I personally thought that that was a good enough reason to let them be worth so much more than the other types of tracks.

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