THE BIG STORY
A wild Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway Saturday night ended with a green-white-checker finish and Kevin Harvick in victory lane. After a late-race crash took out about 20 cars, Harvick went ahead for his second straight restrictor-plate victory. Kasey Kahne was second and Jeff Gordon third. Harvick leads Gordon by 212 points.
Also: Nominees for the second class in the NASCAR Hall of Fame: Bobby Allison, Buck Baker, Red Byron, Richard Childress, Jerry Cook, Richie Evans, Tim Flock, Rick Hendrick, Jack Ingram, Dale Inman, Ned Jarrett, Fred Lorenzen, Bud Moore, Raymond Parks, Benny Parsons, David Pearson, Lee Petty, Fireball Roberts, T. Wayne Robertson, Herb Thomas, Curtis Turner, Darrell Waltrip, Joe Weatherly, Glen Wood, Cale Yarborough . . . Jason Meyers won his series-high seventh World of Outlaws A-feature Saturday night at North Central Speedway in Minnesota . . . Andretti Autosport has pulled together enough sponsorship to run Ryan Hunter-Reay for the rest of the Izod IndyCar season.


NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Several accidents in Thursday practice forced Kyle Busch, Kasey Kahne, Tony Stewart and David Ragan, among others, to backup cars. Qualifying was rained-out so Kevin Harvick started on pole. After a rain delay of about 90 minutes, Jimmie Johnson led the first lap and then Harvick powered around on lap two. Jeff Gordon, Harvick, Greg Biffle and then Kyle Busch led before a competition caution on lap 15. Harvick took just two new tires and came out of the pits first. Busch pitted under green on lap 29 with a loose wheel and fell to 38th position. Johnson had a flat right-rear tire on lap 48 and pitted, dropping to 36th. On green-flag stops, Jeff Burton overshot his pit area. Juan Pablo Montoya and Gordon were in the pits when a yellow came out for J.J. Yeley’s shredded tire, so they restarted at the front. On lap 66, A.J. Allmendinger spun coming off turn four. By lap 85, Busch was back in front. After a series of green-flag stops, Busch was leading but had contact with Montoya on the back straight and crashed. Mark Martin had been on pit road when that yellow happened so he restarted in the lead. Montoya, Gordon and Burton took turns at the front. Matt Kenseth pitted with a flat tire. There was a turn-three wreck with 44 laps to go when Ragan got loose and Jamie McMurray and Martin Truex Jr. were involved. Stewart got the lead by taking only two new tires on his pit stop. David Stremme and Robert Richardson Jr. crashed with 24 laps to go. The yellow waved again quickly after the restart with Martin, Kenseth and Elliott Sadler involved. A huge accident came with 13 laps to go, involving about 20 cars in turn three, including Johnson, Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch, Joey Logano, Stewart and Montoya. Martin’s car stopped on pit road on fire but he jumped out OK. The red flag was out for about 20 minutes. Clint Bowyer didn’t pit for new tires while the other front runners did. The green waved with eight laps left and Gordon got around Bowyer. With the leaders coming to the white flag, and Bowyer back in the lead, there was a crash involving Kurt Busch, Sam Hornish Jr. and Sadler. That created an overtime finish and six extra laps. Harvick quickly went to the front and stayed there by .092 second over Kahne. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was fourth, behind Gordon, with Burton fifth. The winner averaged 135.719 mph with nine yellows for 37 of the 166 laps. There were 47 lead changes among 18 drivers.

NASCAR Nationwide Series
Dale Earnhardt Jr. scored an emotional victory in Friday night’s Subway Jalapeno 250 at Daytona, the debut of NASCAR’s new Nationwide series car, including Ford Mustangs and Dodge Challengers. Earnhardt, driving a No. 3 Chevrolet fielded by Richard Childress, took the lead on lap 70 and stayed there through two extra laps on a green-white-checker finish. He ended up .094 second ahead of Joey Logano, followed by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Earnhardt grabbed the lead from Kyle Busch, got out of the pits first after a debris caution five laps later, and was among those who didn’t pit on a late yellow when Paul Menard got into the wall. He said he would not drive a No. 3 car again. He averaged 146.248 mph after 102 laps with four cautions for 16 laps. Brad Keselowski, in a Challenger, finished fourth and is 247 points ahead of Carl Edwards (11th) in a Mustang.

Izod IndyCar Series
Will Power passed Penske teammate Ryan Briscoe on a restart with six laps to go to win Sunday’s Camping World Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. Power had led most of the race from the pole but Briscoe got out of the pits ahead of him on the last pit stop. After falling to third, Briscoe passed Dario Franchitti on the last of 60 laps to be runner-up, by 1.2 seconds. Franchitti was third. Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves had contact early in the race and both pitted for repairs. Power, now with three wins, averaged 120.768 mph with two full-course cautions for five laps. He is 32 points ahead of Franchitti.

Rolex Sports Car Series
Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas won Saturday’s Brumos Porsche 250 on the Daytona road course despite penalties issued earlier in the week. Grand-Am penalized Pruett and Rojas, plus their team and BMW, 25 points for an engine violation at Mid-Ohio. There also was a $15,000 fine. Teams using the five-liter BMW V-8 at Daytona had a 75-pound weight penalty. Regardless, Pruett took the lead with one hour to go and led all but one of the remaining laps in what was the 100th race for the Daytona Prototype class. His BMW-Riley finished 24.304 seconds ahead of Ryan Dalziel and Mike Forest in another BMW-Riley. Oswaldo Negri and John Pew were third in a Ford-Riley. The winners averaged 116.889 mph over the 83 laps. Pruett and Rojas lead Dalziel by 13 points and have six wins in eight races. In GT, Andy Lally and RJ Valentine won in a Porsche GT3.

Racer of the Week
Richard Childress. His three Cup cars dominate at Daytona after Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins the Nationwide race in a Childress’ No. 3 Chevy.

Yes, He REALLY Said That
Kevin Harvick, on the new Nationwide series car. “The cars just look really cool so that’s great for a sport that revolves around cool cars.”

This Weekend
NASCAR goes to Chicagoland for Friday night Nationwide and Saturday night Cup racing. The Trucks try Iowa Sunday. Formula One travels to England. NHRA begins the Western Swing in Seattle. ALMS is in Utah.

 

Proceed with caution on changes to the Chase

NASCAR needs to ensure it isn't injecting artificial excitement into Chase

Sam Greenwood / Getty Images
The current Chase format was adopted in 2004 and modified slightly in the 2007 NASCAR racing season.
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OPINION
By Reid Spencer

updated 4:06 p.m. ET, Tues., July 6, 2010

Be careful, NASCAR.
Brian France, the sanctioning body's chairman and CEO, said Friday at Daytona that NASCAR was contemplating changes to the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format that could be "significant."
If that's the case, NASCAR would be well advised to tread lightly in overhauling its 10-race playoff system.
Story continues below ↓


"What we're talking about is enhancing it in a way that will bring out more of the winning moments, the big moments that happen in sports," France said. "And if there's a way we can do that—and there are a couple of ways—we're going to give that a lot of weight."
NASCAR already has floated ideas in conversations with drivers and team owners. Those ideas include expanding the number of drivers who qualify for the Chase; eliminating a portion of the Chase field as the playoffs progress; and instituting a point structure that all but guarantees the identity of the Sprint Cup champion will remain in doubt until the final lap of the season finale.
Why does France believe the Chase may need significant tweaking? First and foremost, TV viewership among 18- to 34-year-old males has eroded by a factor of 29 percent this year, according to Fox Sports CEO David Hill, citing ratings data from the first 12 races of the Cup season.
To change the Chase in hopes of regaining the interest of the short-attention-span generation, however, may be misguided.
The Chase was born, you'll remember in the aftermath of Matt Kenseth's less-than-scintillating 2003 championship, when the driver of the No. 17 Ford out-steadied the rest of the field, won one race and wrapped up the title at Rockingham, a week before the final race at Homestead.
Since then, the Chase already has undergone significant changes. It started in 2004 with 10 drivers, plus any drivers within 400 points of the lead after 26 races (a rule that never came into play).
After Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon—two of the sports highest-magnitude stars—failed to qualify for the 2005 Chase, and two-time champ Tony Stewart and rising star Carl Edwards failed to make the cut in 2006, the field was expanded to 12 drivers beginning in 2007.
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From 2004 to 2006, the so-called regular-season winner started the Chase with a five-point advantage of second place, a 10-point advantage over third, and so forth. Starting in 2007, NASCAR has seeded the Chase according to the number of victories in the first 26 races, with each win worth 10 points added to the 5,000-point base each Chase qualifier receives.
The first Chase produced the sort of big impact moment France hopes to duplicate. Despite losing a wheel as he approached pit road at Homestead, Kurt Busch held off Jimmie Johnson and Gordon to win the first championship under the new format. The issue was in doubt until the final lap, when Greg Biffle held off Johnson to secure the title for Busch by a mere eight points.
Those moments are precious precisely because they occur naturally and occasionally—and not through a contrivance that smacks of the artificial. If you score the Chase like an episode of "Family Feud"—where progressive values are increased to ensure that the winners of the last segment win the day—you're applying a game-show mentality that does the sport a huge injustice.
Johnson, who has won the past four championships, has talked to NASCAR about the Chase.
"The thing I keep questioning them on is making sure that it follows the history of our sport, and a champion is crowned in a way that respects the past and past champions," he said. "Some of the ideas I've heard are absolutely crazy—it's more of a crapshoot than anything."

Carl Edwards also weighed in with some sage advice.
"I think whatever it is we do, at the same time we ought to come up with a rule that says we're not going to change the point system but one time every 10 or 15 years, because I think it's hard to look at even what Jimmie has done the last four years. It's hard for anybody to say, 'Hey, how does that compare to the greats like Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough?'
"When you change things, it has the potential to diminish their value."
In other words, NASCAR doesn't need to cheapen a strong product by injecting artificial excitement into the championship process. Not every World Series or NBA Finals goes to Game 7.