NASCAR: The Chase’s Impact on the Xfinity Series

NASCAR thinks adding the Chase format to the Xfinity Series is going to make a big impact in 2016. NASCAR shouldn’t count their chickens before they hatch, especially when it comes to the Chase.

A couple of weeks ago, NASCAR announced that “using the overwhelming success of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format introduced in 2014 as a guidepost” they were “extending” the Chase format into the Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series.

I don’t expect this change to have much of an impact on the Truck Series. The Truck Series has been one of mostly season-long stability for a few years. Familiar names like Crafton, Sauter, and Peters battling it out for championships with new names like Jones, Dillon, and Blaney. Championship battles that – without a Chase format – in four of the last five years came down mathematically to the season finale. Other than Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski driving part-time for their own Truck Series teams, by and large Sprint Cup drivers swinging by the Truck Series is an occasional happening, but not really a regular one.

However, the Xfinity Series has long been the Saturday playground of many Cup drivers. Last year, three of the top-four cars in the Xfinity owners standings were driven by a Cup driver a large majority of the time, and the fifth-place car (the #20 for Joe Gibbs Racing) would’ve likely joined them in that practice if not for Kyle Busch’s Daytona injury.

(That is not meant to be a complaint. I have no problem with Joe Gibbs or Jack Roush putting a Cup driver in an Xfinity car. Development is not only something that happens with drivers, and if you are JGR and you are developing crew chiefs, engineers, spotters, crew members, etc…do you feel like you’re getting the most from your equipment if Matt Tifft is driving, or if Kyle Busch or Denny Hamlin is driving? And since they took the Cup drivers out of the Nationwide/Xfinity championship picture, Cup drivers have only won 117 out of 166 races…a cool 70.4% clip, so “taking Cup drivers out” of the series has accomplished…what, exactly?)

Here’s the thing: maybe NASCAR let Xfinity team owners “know” that there was a Chase coming, but I’m pretty convinced NASCAR kept the details hidden until their announcement. Why? Because, by my count, there are nine championship-level teams with championship-eligible drivers for the 2016 season. Nine. For twelve Chase spots.

(If you’re asking, the nine are two from Joe Gibbs Racing, two from JR Motorsports, two from Roush Fenway Racing, and three from Richard Childress Racing.)

In 2015, there were ten drivers and teams who would’ve fit those criteria. Guess how many of the first 26 races last year were won by those ten drivers. (Go ahead and Google it…I’ll wait.) Five. Five! How many of the six Chase races would’ve been won by Chase contenders? Zero. By waiting until three weeks before the season to announce the new changes, NASCAR has set itself up for very similar results in 2016. “Here come five Cup drivers in the top-five spots…(Adam Alexander’s voice ramps up)…but LOOK AT THIS BATTLE FOR SIXTH.” And let’s not even get started on the “qualification” via the “Dash 4 Cash” races, which will essentially lock in a driver who would have most certainly qualified, anyway.

I think NASCAR has inadvertently created a situation very similar to March Madness. People who were against the idea of a college football playoff would point to the basketball tournament and say “but nobody cares about the regular season they only care about the tournament.” Right now, from a championship perspective, other than the <1% chance that a driver who otherwise would not have made the Chase would win his way in, there is literally no reason to watch the 26 pre-Chase Xfinity races.

Perhaps if NASCAR had announced these changes several months before the season some of these top-level Xfinity teams would have reworked their driver line-ups to have more real championship contenders. Are we really going to go to Chicago with Ross Chastain and Ryan Sieg in Chase spots, and Jeremy Clements and Ryan Preece going for the final Chase spot? That looks to be the plan.

More racing: NASCAR: The 2016 Big Prediction Page

I’ll be very interested to see what the Chase does to the 2017 season. Could a JR Motorsports be able to find a full-time ride for Late Model hero Josh Berry, with a more-or-less guaranteed Chase spot as a carrot for potential sponsors? Could a guy like David Ragan choose to take a championship-contending Xfinity ride instead of a lower-level Cup ride like BK Racing? Could the Xfinity Series find it’s best cars being filled by would-be Cup drivers who would rather have a seven-race chance at a title, and subsequently will the lowest 12-14 Cup rides be filled by the younger drivers instead? And if that is the case, could the chasm between the top 22-28 Cup teams and everyone else be made that much wider?

Whatever the case, I’m already looking forward to the 2017 Silly Season as much as I’m looking forward to the 2016 Xfinity season.