NASCAR Truck Series: Matt Crafton's 2019 title not controversial

The NASCAR Truck Series playoff format has taken a boatload of criticism for allowing a non-winner in Matt Crafton to win the championship. But the reality of it is that Crafton rose to the occasion when he needed to, and despite everybody else knowing what was required to be crowned, they couldn’t pull if off.

At no point throughout the 23-race 2019 NASCAR Truck Series season did ThorSport Racing’s Matt Crafton drive his way to victory lane. In fact, he didn’t in the 2018 season, either; it’s been almost 28 months since he last won a race, as he won at Eldora Speedway in July of 2017.

He closed out the 2019 season winless, and his win drought has now reached 58 races, his longest win drought since he went from the May race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the 2008 season to the June race at Iowa Speedway in the 2011 season without a win (79 races).

He also closed out the 2019 season as the newly crowned champion.

Crafton secured the championship with his second place finish in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the Ford EcoBoost 200, as a Championship 4 competitor, finishing behind only Hattori Racing Enterprises’ Austin Hill, who had already been eliminated from the playoffs.

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He finished ahead of the other three Championship 4 drivers — Niece Motorsports’ Ross Chastain, GMS Racing’s Brett Moffitt and Halmar Friesen Racing’s Stewart Friesen, and that is what it took for him to be crowned champion.

But the idea that a driver can go an entire season — in Crafton’s case, more than two and a half seasons — without winning a race and yet still be crowned champion during this span has been called out as ludicrous by some fans, who have taken this opportunity to rail against the Championship 4 format and the playoff format in general, in which the highest finisher of the four title contenders in the season finale is crowned the champion.

Such criticism could not possibly be more unwarranted, especially in this case, and for several reasons.

Some fans truly hate the playoffs. They would prefer for all three series to revert to the pre-Championship 4 (pre-2014) era, and some would even prefer for the playoffs to be completely eliminated altogether and to revert to the pre-playoffs (pre-2004) era.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

But the bottom line is this. Whether you love the playoffs, couldn’t care less about the playoffs or hate the playoffs to the point where you’d stop watching NASCAR over the fact that they exist, that’s all opinion-based.

No matter what your opinion is, it’s important to base your opinion on facts, and the fact is this.

Every team and driver competing for the championship knows the playoff format that is being utilized, whether that format seems like the gold standard or utter garbage. Above all, every team and driver understands what it takes to be crowned champion in this format.

Nobody has an unfair advantage over anybody else based on the format used; everyone is subject to the same rules and requirements at the same time.

So if you want to win the first 22 races of the season and wreck out of the finale, then by all means, take your fourth place finish in the championship standings.

But all that proves is you don’t truly have what it takes.

Crafton, despite not winning a single race in 2019, proved that he had what it took when stacked up against every other driver and team in the field under the same set of rules.

With all things considered, he did it in quite a spectacular fashion as well considering how much emphasis the current Championship 4 playoff format places on wins with the whole “win and in” to the playoffs and “win and in” to the next round concepts that are on display on a weekly basis throughout the year.

He did it solely through his consistency, which is one thing that many fans claim to love about the pre-Championship 4 format.

Crafton was one of only two drivers who qualified for the playoffs without winning a regular season race. He finished the regular season with 14 top 10 finishes, of which six were top five finishes, and a series-high average finish of 7.25 in 16 races.

He finished in third place in the regular season point standings, yet he finished on the bubble in the eighth and final transfer spot of the playoff picture.

Had a non-winner as opposed to Hill won the regular season finale at Michigan International Speedway, Crafton would have been on the outside looking in despite a phenomenal regular season, really one of the best that the series has ever seen, that did not include any finishes worse than 14th place.

He then muscled his way to the round of 6 via a fifth place points position in the round of 8 despite an engine failure in the round of 8 finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. In the round of 6, he muscled his way to the Championship 4 on points by utilizing a late charge in the round of 6 finale at ISM Raceway to secure the fourth and final transfer spot over Hill.

In the Championship 4, he positioned himself to win the title simply by finishing ahead of the three drivers he needed to finish ahead of.

If anything, he did it the hard way.

Take as much issue with the playoffs as you please. But that’s not the issue here. Don’t hate the player; hate the game.

NASCAR didn’t hand anybody anything. Crafton deserves this championship more than anybody else in the field. He won the title in spite of this format, not because of it, and he showed up when it mattered most while the rest of the contenders were nowhere in sight.

Literally.

Chastain was the next highest finisher in second place in the championship standings, and he finished more than nine seconds — just under one-third of the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) Homestead-Miami Speedway oval in Homestead, Florida — behind Crafton in fourth in the race.

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There is no better driver than Matt Crafton to drive this point home, either. The man is now a three-time NASCAR Truck Series champion, second only to four-time champion Ron Hornaday Jr., a 51-time Truck Series race winner.

Yet in 453 starts over 20 seasons, including 452 in 19 seasons as a full-time driver, he has just 14 victories to his name, and he has only been victorious in seven different seasons. His three championship seasons have produced a combined three victories.

Crafton, who led only 44 of the 3,291 laps he completed throughout the entire 2019 season, is a big-picture driver, and he always has been. Now in a win-based championship format, he still found a way to become champion without winning.

There’s nothing even remotely controversial about that.

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NASCAR Truck Series: Matt Crafton’s 2019 title not controversial

By Asher Fair | Nov 16, 2019