NASCAR Determines a Champion – Or Not

NASCAR has never been interested in determining a true champion. If the most deserving driver wins, fine. If not, oh well. What NASCAR is interested in is keeping as many people sitting in front of their TV sets as possible, and if it has to corrupt the championship to do that, so be it.
We have an example of that this year. Kyle Larson has clearly been the most dominant driver of the circuit; it isn’t even close, yet he goes into Sunday’s race at Martinsville in danger of being eliminated from the final round of the playoffs.
That’s because NASCAR uses a points system that rewards finishing races rather than competing and gives any driver who wins a race a shot at the title.
OGS has it’s own way of scoring races, and it more closely reflects who is doing well on the track and who isn’t. OGS only awards points to the top five finishers in a race and for leading laps under green, and it gives you a much better picture of who’s competitive and who’s not.
For competitive purposes, OGS does not count races at Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta because doing well there depends on two things, avoiding the big wreck and being in the right place at the right time on the last lap. And primarily, that’s determined by luck, not skill.
For example, going into Martinsville , NASCAR’s top 10 are:
1-Christopher Bell, 4132 points.
2-William Byron, 4110.A
3-Kyle Larson, 4103.
4-Tyler Reddick, 4098.
5-Denny Hamlin, 4092.
6-Ryan Blaney, 4072.
7-Joey Logano, 4070.
8-Chase Elliott, 4067.
9-Alex Bowman, 2264.
10-Martin Truex, 2213.
The first eight are playoff drivers and scored differently from Bowman and Truex, but you can see they are closely bunched together, which is not really a refection of how they’ve performed.
Here’s the OGS top ten:
1-Larson, 680 points.
2-Bell, 520.
3-Hamlin, 477..
4-Reddick, 439.
5-Byron, 412.
6-Blaney, 298.
7-Elliott, 280.
8-Brad Keslowski, 248.
9-Ty Gibbs, 239.
10-Chris Buescher, 220.
Another problem with the NASCAR system is its win and you’re in policy, which guarantees and driver who wins a race a playoff spot unless special circumstances are involved. A number of these drivers have absolutely no business competing for a championship because they have not been at all competitive during the season.
The most egregious example is Harrison Burton, who won at Daytona. NASCAR has Burton with 2100 points. OGS doesn’t even score the car because it’s simply not competitive.
Other examples are Daniel Suarez, who won at Atlanta and has 2185 NASCAR points but only 27 with OGS, and Austin Cindric, who has 2189 NASCAR points and won at St. Louis. OGS has Cindric with 81 points. While Burton, Suarez and Cindric have all been eliminated from the playoffs, they never deserved to be there in the first place.
But unless NASCAR shakes things up, this will oontinue to happen. It won’t do that though because it has what it wants right now. What it doesn’t have is a way to determine a real champion