Summer is here: Let the points racing begin

NASCAR's long, hot summer is in full swing, and the Sprint Cup circuit will stretch from Florida to California with nine races over the next 10 weeks in the run-up to the Chase. Drivers and teams will be tested on two of the longest and toughest tracks (Daytona and Indianapolis) and two of the shortest and least manageable (Bristol and Richmond). There will be little time to rest.

But those who think everybody will be racing in heated pursuit of victories should think again. The real story of this part of the schedule will be points racing .


Particularly for the drivers in the upper reaches of the standings -- say the top five -- winning races over the next couple of months will not be as important as finishing them. This tried-and-true approach worked even in the days before Brian France invented the Chase and tried somewhat awkwardly to fit the term playoffs into the NASCAR lexicon.

Drivers don't like to talk about points racing. NASCAR and track promoters won't talk about it. A promoter's selling point, no matter where the race falls on the schedule, is that every driver is trying his darndest to overcome the driver in the position immediately above him. Tooth and nail. Gladiatorlike struggling. Life and death, almost.

That simply isn't the case. Once teams settle comfortably into the top rungs of the standings, it's to their advantage to think as fast as they race. If I can be almost guaranteed a fifth-place finish -- and stay in the top five in points -- by running reasonably hard, why should I bust my butt and my equipment and risk a points-killing wreck or a blown engine to finish second?

There is no better points racer than Matt Kenseth, though he'll never admit he's driving for anything except the win. Kenseth won his Cup title in 2003, the last season before the Chase despite winning only one race. He had 25 top 10 finishes.

In 2005, Kenseth was 24th in the standings and 320 points outside the Chase cutoff with 12 races to go but rallied to make the field. This year, he was in 22nd, 204 points out of the Chase, after 10 races. Seven races later, he is 13th and just eight points down.

"It's not whether you're trying harder -- we always try as hard as we can," Kenseth says. "It's just that we've had less trouble, and we've been able to do our parts a little bit better lately."

Before the arrival of the Chase, someone figured out that, in most seasons, if a driver finished seventh in every race -- no top fives, no wins, just sevenths -- he likely would win the Cup championship. An enterprising reporter asked several drivers before the season if they would take that deal -- all sevenths, no wins, a guaranteed championship. All thought the question wasn't fair.

It isn't like such thinking is unique to NASCAR. Baseball teams that lock up division titles rest their best pitchers. Playoff-bound NFL teams play second-stringers in meaningless games. Not every driver is going to compete for every position in every given situation. It simply isn't practical or smart.

The thing that the Chase has changed about this scenario involves, generally speaking, the drivers in the gray area from sixth to 18th in points. Entering this part of the season, they have to be both careful and cutthroat. A driver 15th in points, three positions and a hundred points out of qualifying for the Chase, might make a couple of risky moves late in a race to pick up 30 points and move closer to a spot in the Chase.

Meanwhile, points leader Kyle Busch rolls on in front of the sometimes awkward crowding behind him. With 50 bonus points tucked away because of his five victories, he can race to win without a lot of thought to the consequences, as long as he doesn't do anything remarkably stupid.

And that's one thing successful points racers aren't -- remarkably stupid.