The Points System. It could have been simpler.

The points system

On Wednesday NASCAR announced the new and improved simpler points system. The winner of the race will get 43 points, 2nd place will get 42 points, on down to 43rd place which will get 1 point. The race winner will get 3 bonus points, plus 1 point for leading a lap. There will also be 1 point awarded for leading the most laps. A couple of things occured to me about this change:
1: If the streamlining here was to make the points system simpler, why is the race winner awarded 43 points, plus 3 points for winning the race, plus one point for leading a lap? Wouldn't it be simpler just to say that race wins are worth 47 points, with a possible 48th point for leading the most laps?
2: I wonder if NASCAR is also going to adjust the number of points deducted for rule infractons? I am thinking of Clint Bowyers 150 point penalty last season. Conceivably (at least in my mind, anyway) a penalized driver could be back near the top in 4 or 5 races under the old system. Under the new system, a mid-season penalty could doom a driver's chances of recovery. I'll have to make another chart now that I see how this has panned out.
C'mon February 20th!!!!!!

The Points System

I was pondering this points change thing, as announced so far. I did the most logical thing that I could do. I made a chart. As you can see from the chart, it's still a complicated mess. So they should probably leave it alone.

The Greening Of Nascar

This season NASCAR will start using an Ethanol blended fuel in the races. This is a good and Politically Correct (fingers choking on the last two words) thing to do. Ethanol alcohol is produced from corn, so this benefits American farmers and the production of Ethanol is expected to create 136,000 American jobs...jobs that cannot easily be moved offshore, according to American Ethanol. Now if only we could get fuel injected cars to increase the mileage, so that Denny Hamlin stops running out of gas...

Jeremy Mayfield back in the news

I just read on Nascar.com that Jeremy Mayfield is filing an appeal of his long lost lawsuit. Give it up, Jeremy... just think, had you just sucked it up, and went through drug treatment like NASCAR wanted, you'd probably be reinstated. Instead, you chose to throw away a lucrative job, and lost your own racing team in the process, just to supposedly prove a point. What was the point, that of being a sore loser?
I'm not saying Mayfield was guilty, though he may very well have been. It just seems to me that it would have made much more sense just to play the game, do the treatment, and all the while proclaim your innocence. I'm sure both of his fans would have been appreciative.