Where is the fairness? While sports like NBA, NHL MLB NFL, and MLS all have ways for teams to improve after a difficult season, NASCAR seems content not to follow this trend and severely damage itself as a sport in the process.
Could these incentives help lower funded teams. Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Whether it be first round picks for teams that have been struggling all year, or a salary cap to help make sure that one lone franchise isn’t pulling in all the money, most sports have some kind of balancing system to help struggling franchises stay afloat and give them a chance to rebuild for the future.
NASCAR on the other hand, has none of that. They don’t draft drivers to their team every year, they don’t have salary caps to help teams catch up and stay competitive with top tier teams and they definitely don’t have any way for these small teams to find a winning edge over the rest of the field.
While these are all reasonable complaints, they are also unsolvable ones. There is no way that NASCAR could institute a draft, especially with most drivers getting signed to a specific team long before they enter the Sprint Cup Series. Salary caps wouldn’t work either, it would just cause the top tier teams to hurt financially as well. With that being said, what can NASCAR do to even out its sport?
More from Beyond the Flag
- NASCAR Cup Series: New team set to compete in 2024
- NASCAR: Will Kevin Harvick’s major record ever be broken?
- NASCAR: Surprising name continuously linked to new seat
- Formula 1: Top Red Bull threat identified for 2024
- NASCAR driver at risk of missing the Daytona 500?
The answer to question can be found in the comments that Michael Waltrip recently made regarding his teams demise. When Waltrip was asked about if the difference between making The Chase and not was the money being put into each car he had this to say to FoxSports.com:
“I would say it’s safe to say that because of the purse and sponsor incentives, but more than that, it’s about survival. You have to be a Chase team if you want to be here for the long haul.” With that being said, it seems that making The Chase has gone beyond being good for a team, but paramount for the team’s survival in The Sprint Cup Series.
So the answer here is to restructure The Chase to allow more teams to compete at the end of each season. Doing this will allow lower funded teams and drivers to have an extra spotlight on them and will also allow for them to earn extra money as well. While this isn’t the greatest answer and will definitely cause some to question the legitimacy of NASCAR’s post season, it would give lower funded drivers and teams a way to compete with their higher funded counterparts.
Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports
Just to give everyone an idea about how much big money is at stake in a single postseason here is excerpt from a 2012 ESPN article that discusses driver incentives to make the postseason.
"A driver who makes the Chase for the Sprint Cup and finishes in the top 10 in the points standings likely will earn around $10 million. Drivers who finish 11th-20th in the standings typically earn about $5-8 million, depending on their base salaries. A driver near the back of the pack likely still will clear a few million."
While expanding The Chase won’t instantly make lower funded teams competitive, it will provide them more hope to be competitive in the future. If anything, this at least would give teams more income to help them find a competitive edge, whether that be in the engine, aerodynamics or chassis department.
Expanding The Chase will also put the spotlight on a lot of lower funded teams as well. This in turn will put their sponsors in the spotlight, which most of the time results in the sponsors offering additional incentives and monies for a driver to perform well in The Chase. Again, this may not all happen in one season, but it will set up a promising future for these teams, especially if they keep sponsors happy with great performances.
Looking at the current 16 driver format of The Sprint Cup Chase, I believe it should be expanded to field 24 drivers each season. This would give The Contender round of The Chase a wild card weekend type feel, while also spotlighting the less powerful teams and drivers in The Sprint Cup Series. In turn, this also creates an added sense of excitement and unpredictability for fans watching at home and in the stands.
The drivers would then be eliminated in groups of eight at the end of each round of The Chase and would receive bonuses for their performance during the season. The driver incentives will still increase based on what round of The Chase drivers finish in, but NASCAR would also offer bonus incentives for smaller teams based on how they finish as well.
The extra incentives given to smaller teams would be based on seeding heading into The Chase. If a smaller team is able to finish ahead of team that is higher up, they would receive a set rate of money that would increase for every round of The Chase they made it to. For example, if a driver like Casey Mears was able to beat a driver like Jimmie Johnson in the second round of The Chase, they would be given a half a million dollar bonus for doing so.
The bonus would double every round of The Chase and would really give smaller teams even more of reason to try to make it to the postseason. Finally, NASCAR should give small ranked teams their own point standings and title at the end of the season. This gives these smaller teams an incentive to fight for all season long, whether they make The Chase or not.
While these plans are not perfect and will probably draw some ire from fans who think NASCAR already caters too much to the smaller teams, this is honestly NASCAR’s best chance of balancing their series out and staying competitive in the future. Maybe it will stop teams like MWR from failing in the future, or maybe it won’t, but it’s definitely worth a shot.