NASCAR: Without stages, who would have been 2019 champion?

There are still many NASCAR fans who haven’t come to accept the addition of the playoffs and of stage racing. Removing both of those concepts, who would the 2019 Cup Series champion have been?

The NASCAR Cup Series playoffs were introduced ahead of the 2004 season, and they have seen various changes over the years.

Most recently, the introduction of stages ahead of the 2017 season has allowed drivers to increase their playoff point totals simply by winning “stages”, effectively by leading races at two predetermined points through them.

Additionally, stages award regular points to the drivers who finish them in the top 10.

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When the 2019 season was all said and done, it was Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch who was crowned champion for the second time in his career, as he held off the other three Championship 4 drivers in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Busch won this 267-lap Ford EcoBoost 400 around the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) Homestead-Miami Speedway oval in Homestead, Florida in his #18 Toyota while teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin finished in second and 10th place in their #19 Toyota and #11 Toyota, respectively, and Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick finished in fourth in his #4 Ford.

But who would the 2019 champion have been had none of these changes taken place and had the 2019 season been contested like the 2003 season?

A separate article was published earlier this week regarding how the final 2019 championship standings would have looked had the season been a simple 36-race season as opposed to a season including 26 regular season races before 10 playoff races. But this article goes one step further, as it also excludes stage points.

Of course, certain situations would have caused certain drivers to approach things differently because of how stages factor into the racing now. But if we were to take a look at this season and base the championship standings on points alone, the result may be surprising.

The champion would have scored 1,031 points, and the top two would have been separated by just nine points, the top three would have been separated by just 16 points and the top four would have been separated by just 29 point.

Here is how the final championship standings would have looked had the season been one long 36-race season, not a 26-race regular season the a four-round, 10-race playoffs, and had these 36 races simply been pre-2017 races without stages to award additional points to drivers.

Rank – Driver – Points
1st – Kyle Busch – 1031
2nd – Denny Hamlin – 1022
3rd – Martin Truex Jr. – 1015
4th – Kevin Harvick – 1002
5th – Joey Logano – 963
6th – Brad Keselowski – 890
7th – Kurt Busch – 873
8th – Ryan Blaney – 848
9th – Alex Bowman – 820
10th – Ryan Newman – 814
11th – Chase Elliott – 810
12th – Kyle Larson – 805
13th – William Byron – 799
13th – Clint Bowyer – 799
15th – Aric Almirola – 788
16th – Erik Jones – 765
17th – Daniel Suarez – 744
17th – Paul Menard – 744
19th – Jimmie Johnson – 714
20th – Chris Buescher – 695
21st – Matt DiBenedetto – 683
22nd – Austin Dillon – 614
23rd – Ricky Stenhouse Jr. – 608
24th – Ty Dillon – 593
25th – Daniel Hemric – 515
26th – Ryan Preece – 504
27th – Michael McDowell – 470
28th – Darrell Wallace Jr. – 430
29th – Corey LaJoie – 401
30th – David Ragan – 388
31st – Matt Tifft – 352

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Will NASCAR ever do away with the playoffs and/or stages and go back to how things were before the 2004 season? More than likely, the answer to that question is no, and given how radical both changes seemed, it’s really more of a question of what will the sanctioning body think of next to play a role in the championship other than pure points?

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