Time to Change the Points Rules
As most of you already know, Bobby Labonte was in a gruesome accident while practicing for Saturdays Busch Grand National race at Darlington on Friday. The accident broke the tip of his scapula and the Joe Gibbs owned Busch team withdrew their entry for the event. Of course, they couldn't withdraw from the Winston Cup event, So it was decided that Bobby would start the race and at the first possible chance, would get out of the car and Matt Kenseth would take over. Those of you unfamiliar with Winston Cup rules may wonder why he would even bother starting the race, when he knew ahead of time he would be unable to finish it. The answer is that as long as Labonte starts the race, he gets all of the points for whatever position Kenseth would be able to salvage. Kenseth, winner of Saturday's Busch race was indeed up to the task and salvaged a 10th place finish, despite starting almost from the back due to the driver change, worth 134 points and good enough to keep Labonte in 3rd place in the point standings. That was huge for Labonte, because if he would have finished last, he would have tumbled to 7th in the standings based on 34 points he would have gotten for finishing 43rd. As you can see, as long as Labonte was capable of climbing in the car, there was no way he was going to skip that race.
Why do I have a problem with this? Simple because it is unbelievably unfair to the drivers that ran the whole race that Labonte gets these points for not finishing. Now I am not knocking Bobby, the fact is, I like him and think he is a tremendous driver. I also realize that this is common practice. Who could forget Earnhardt at the Brickyard a couple of years ago, yielding in obvious pain to Skinner, or Skinner last year, giving way to Morgan Shepard. Yes, the practice of starting a race to get the points is as old as the point system itself, and unbelievable wrong. In determining the points championship each year, most drivers agree that the secret to winning is consistency. You don't have to win every race, but you need to FINISH well. The most dreaded stat for any driver is the DNF, Did Not FINISH. Today, in the Transouth 400, Bobby Labonte did not FINISH, yet through the loophole in the rules, gets credited with a 10th place FINISH. (Notice my emphasis on FINISH?) I also think that besides being unfair to the drivers that actually FINISH a race, the injured driver is being exposed to the chance of further injury. In today's race, there was an accident involving Kenny Schrader, Dale Earnhardt and Jerry Nadeau at the very beginning. Bobby could have easily been involved in that and suffered more injuries forcing a longer recovery period. If Interstate was upset about the situation in the first place, imagine the reaction if they were to get notice that Bobby would miss a month or so of races.
Rather than complaining without offering a solution, I do (of course) have a solution in mind. I propose a rules change saying that a driver only gets credit for the laps turned while he is actually driving. For instance, if a driver turns the driving duties over to someone else after 10 laps of a 200 lap event, his points would be handled as if the engine blew and he withdrew after 10 laps, most likely last place. The relief driver would get credit for running 190 laps, and be awarded points accordingly, assuming they don't lose a lap along the way. It would be sort of like that driver was in the pits for 10 laps when the race started. The car owner would get points for where the car finished. (Oh! I forgot about owners points, you say to yourself) In this case, the car actually went all 200 scheduled laps, therefore the owner would get points awarded according for where the car crosses the FINISH line. For instance, say Bobby Labonte got out on lap 10, and Matt Kenseth brought the car home first. Labonte would have been credited with a 44th place finish worth 31 points, Kenseth would have been credited with a 41st place finish worth 43 points and Joe Gibbs would be credited with a first place finish worth 175 points. Certainly, this would be the most complicated scenario. It is not often that a relieve driver goes on to win the race, so I don't think it would play out often.
Again, I don't blame Bobby Labonte for starting this race. In my opinion, he was put in a bad situation by the NASCAR rules. With my rules adjustment, Labonte, Gibbs and Interstate would certainly decided that risking Bobby's health for a mere 31 points would not be worth it, but under NASCAR's rules, it was certainly worth the risk for 134 points.