In 2003, Matt Kenseth won the final Winston Cup (as it was known then) before NASCAR would bring in the Chase For The Nextel Cup (after the first rebrand). This change was made because Matt Kenseth won the championship despite only winning one race, compared to Ryan Newman who finished sixth in points, even though we won a series leading eight races. Kenseth won the third race of the season. Ryan Newman won six of his eight races after the halfway mark of the season. 

The Chase was made for the correct reasons. In 2010, the New England Patriots dominated the regular season, but went into the playoffs, and didn't even make it to the Super Bowl. Just because they were the best earlier on doesn't mean that someone didn't get hot all of a sudden, which is what the Green Bay Packers did by the way, coming from the sixth seed in the NFC to win the Super Bowl.

The Chase was made to keep a driver from showing all their muscle in the first ten races then winning the championship. If someone got hot in the last four races but still lost the championship by over 100 points (in the old point system), then there's no fairness in that. Now, if that team who won early kept it going, then they clearly were the best team and deserve that championship.

People say Jimmie Johnson only has six championships because of The Chase. But lets think about this: how many titles do Earnhardt and Petty have if there was a Chase in their era?

The Chase is fraud proof and will bring out the best drivers when the best drivers should be out. But that's the exact reason the new Chase format is just wrong.

First off, just winning a race basically puts you in the Chase. You can argue that it puts an emphasis on winning and can make races more exciting. But lets be honest here, Kurt Busch won at Martinsville and is currently 26th in the overall points. NASCAR mandates that you must be in the top 30 in overall points to qualify for The Chase, but if you're a decent team and pull out a win, you won't be outside the top 30, that's just the truth.

Next up is the elimination aspect of The Chase. Every three races, four drivers are eliminated from Championship contention. After the third race of the Chase, the bottom four in the Chase standing are eliminated. After the sixth race, 12-9 in points are eliminated. After the ninth race, 9-5 in points are eliminated. This thinking is not fraud proof at all. Any driver who is eliminated can still manage to pull out more points than the top four. Just because they didn't have that many points after three races doesn't mean their hopes should be ended.

The final four drivers remaining will throw all of their points away, and the highest finishing driver amongst them in the final race of the season is declared Sprint Cup Champion. Fans will absolutely hate it when someone wins four or five of the first nine Chase races, and is crushing the field in points, but then blows a tire, goes a lap down, and loses the championship despite being the best car during the right time of the season. Clearly, if you win four Chase races, you do deserve to be crowned Sprint Cup Champion. But the odds for that person actually winning the championship just aren't in favor.

So NASCAR, the fans are pleading. The way you want to crown a champion is just silly and way overboard. For the love of the fans, and to keep your sport alive, bring back the original Chase. Nobody is going to want to see someone like Kyle Larson win the championship if he hasn't won any races, compared to Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick who are just tearing through the series right now and there may be another driver who owns The Chase. This is injustice.

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