The annual NASCAR awards banquet is this week in New York City, but as owners, drivers and fans look back at this season, the NASCAR front office is already considering whether to make changes to the Chase for the Cup for next year.

There have been a lot of suggestions in the past few weeks about how to make the Chase more interesting and ensure that the top drivers in the sport are always included.

It appears that NASCAR Chairman Brian France has been listening. France, the mastermind of the Chase format, said he is not opposed to tweaking things to make it better.

But what changes could we see? In the current format, the Chase is open to the top 10 drivers heading into the final 10 races, plus any other driver within 400 points of the leader at that time.

This story continues below
Advertisement

Some have suggested that the Chase field be expanded to 12, or even 15 drivers. Others say NASCAR should consider allowing all drivers within 500 points of the leader into the Chase. You might as well call that the “Tony Stewart Rule”, though. He would have been the only other driver allowed in the Chase if the 500-point barrier were in effect this season.

Another scenario would give any driver that wins a race an automatic spot in the Chase. Under those rules, there would have been 13 cars in the Chase this year, with Stewart, Greg Biffle and Kurt Busch being the only non-Chase drivers to have won a race before the Chase stated.

France has already dismissed most of those suggestions, though. While he has considered several options that would allow “wild-card” drivers into the Chase, France is still in favor of the current “10 drivers over 10 races” system. Instead of changes to the Chase itself, he is leaning heavily towards a more basic solution: Making wins worth more points then they are now.

While awarding more points for wins would help ensure that drivers with multiple victories could get into the Chase, there is still one element that France is missing: Motivation for the drivers.

Right now, the drivers in the Chase are all guaranteed a spot in the top 10, as well as an appearance on stage at the year-end awards banquet. By including more than 10 drivers in the Chase, that guarantee goes away, creating motivation for the Chase drivers to continue race hard even if they had fallen out of contention for the championship itself.

Adding a competitive incentive that would apply to all of the drivers in the Chase — whether it be winning the Nextel Cup championship or fighting for that 10th and final spot on stage in New York — might be just the ticket to making the Chase exciting from top to bottom over the entire 10-race span. And that extra fire from the Chasers just might leave more teams in contention each year when Homestead rolls around.

Get up to speed on the latest in NASCAR by listening to Wilson’s Race Report every Monday and Friday at 5:39 p.m. on 93.1 WPOC. You can e-mail Steve at wilson@wpoc.com.