Author: nascar_geek

NASCAR PRESS RELEASE – DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (January 23, 2017)

NASCAR, in collaboration with industry stakeholders, announced today an enhanced competition format that will be implemented in all three of its national series – the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, the NASCAR XFINITY Series and the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

Increasing the sense of urgency and emphasizing aggressive racing and strategy, the race format will deliver more dramatic moments over the course of an entire race and season, with playoff point incentives on the line throughout.

The enhanced format consists of the following:

• Races will now consist of three stages, with championship implications in each stage.
• The top-10 finishers of the first two stages will be awarded additional championship points.
• The winner of the first two stages of each race will receive one playoff point, and the race winner will receive five playoff points. Each playoff point will be added to his or her reset total following race No. 26, if that competitor makes the playoffs.
• All playoff points will carry through to the end of the third round of the playoffs (Round of 8), with the Championship 4 racing straight-up at Homestead-Miami Speedway for the title.
• Championship points following the first two stages will be awarded on a descending scale, with the stage winner receiving 10 points, second receiving 9 points, and so on.
• The race winner following the final stage will now receive 40 points, second-place will receive 35, third-place 34, fourth-place 33, and so on.

“Simply put, this will make our great racing even better,” said Brian France, NASCAR chairman and CEO. “I’m proud of the unprecedented collaboration from our industry stakeholders, each of whom had a common goal – strengthening the sport for our fans. This is an enhancement fully rooted in teamwork, and the result will be an even better product every single week.”

NASCAR also announced a playoff bonus structure that will see the regular season points leader honored as the regular season champion, earning 15 playoff points that will be added to the driver’s playoff reset of 2,000. In addition, the top-10 drivers in points leading into the playoffs will receive playoff points, with second place receiving 10 playoff points, third place will earn 8 points, fourth place will receive 7 points, and so on. All playoff points will carry through to the end of the Round of 8.

“These are enhancements that the NASCAR fan has long sought, and the entire industry has worked hard to develop a better racing format for our fans,” said Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer. “This format puts a premium on every victory and every in-race position over the course of the season. Each point can eventually result in winning or losing a championship.”

Photo Credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images via NASCAR Media

Around this time every NASCAR pre-season I’ll have a subscriber or two contact me about helping them out with their fantasy NASCAR game. The most difficult and urgent request is always the fantasy NASCAR game where you have to select one driver for each of the 36 races on the NASCAR schedule. In addition, you can only use a driver one time. Oh, and you have to make your complete season selections prior to the Daytona 500!

Unfortunately, none of the NASCAR statistical tools on the site make that challenge very easy. Actually, I still haven’t scripted or figured out a database query that makes the task easy either. It’s a labor intensive project that is an excruciating 90-minutes of 1) database query 2) copy/paste 3) rearrange drivers 4) do it again. But, like most research projects that suck while you’re doing it, in the end you’re pretty happy with the data you’ve compiled.

Since I put the effort in to this project and I think that 100 people could interpret and select a different combination of driver-to-race pairings I’m putting the spreadsheet here for anyone to download.

Click to download the spreadsheet.

NASCAR STATISTICS EXAMINED

Last season I created this spreadsheet using the averaged NASCAR Loop Data Driver Rating over the previous three seasons. This year I went with each drivers average finish position.

The top row of the spreadsheet follows the actual race schedule order of the 2015 NASCAR season. Going on the theory that certain drivers do better (or worse) as the season progresses I compiled the average finishes to be race specific. So, the column labeled Daytona 1 uses just the historical data from the first Daytona races during 2012, 2013 and 2014 (aka the Daytona 500). When you move along the top and get to Daytona 2 those values use the average finishes for the Daytona summer race (aka Coke Zero 400). This applies to all two race date tracks on the schedule.

I’ve included 54 NASCAR drivers in the list. This is basically the drivers the website considers as ‘active’ in 2015…meaning we should see them at some time this year attempting to make a race. The number along each driver row is their 3-year average finish (as noted above to be race specific).

Be aware that some of the lower-tier drivers on the list may not have three races of history for a race. For example, Kyle Larson has an average finish of 8th at Atlanta. In reality, he has only raced one race there so that is not really an average but his only finish.

Enjoy!