Sheldon Creed is suddenly red-hot in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series' Chase for the championship. The driver who couldn't win a race to save his life suddenly has three victories in 2026 and has built up an 11-point lead over Justin Allgaier with only six races remaining on the schedule.
Allgaier, of course, has been the class of the field all season in the series, with a 229-point lead in the full-season standings entering the playoffs. If he doesn't win the championship, we will surely be hearing from the high heavens from various circles of fans about what a massive injustice it is that anybody else was allowed to have a chance, even with nine races to decide the title instead of one.
That is, until they realize one inconvenient little detail.
Sheldon Creed has a better average finish this season than Justin Allgaier, which is very awkward for "consistency" loyalists
According to social media, the best driver in a given season is the driver with the best average finish with no ifs, ands, or buts. The vast majority of the time, that driver is also the driver with the most points scored over the full season, because NASCAR designs the base of its points system to be so easy a five-year-old can understand it, which is precisely why it sucks.
Anybody with a math education beyond a third-grade level can tell you why average finish is a flawed stat in evaluating a driver's performance in a sport with so many outlier results. You can finish in front of another driver in nine out of 10 races, but one crash DNF due to being involved in someone else's mess can completely erase the margin.
This is largely what's responsible for the discrepancy here. Allgaier has had a more dominant season by every metric but also has six finishes outside the top 20, while Creed has only four. Thanks to winner's bonus points and stage points compensating his performance throughout races, Allgaier still has a massive in edge the season-long standings.
For that reason, the narrative is that the Chase is stupid and bad for taking away Allgaier's advantage that he earned over the course of the year. But some fans will tell you stage points are also a gimmick and points should only be based on results, with only one marker separating every driver. In such a system, Creed would be ahead.
Points can say whatever they're designed to say. They're an arbitrary measurement, one that only reflects the incentives of the system in place. They're not objective truth.
And maybe now that they've directly contradicted every box score watcher's favorite go-to statistic, they'll finally realize that.
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