Honestly, knowing what happened with the Chase system, the case could be made that Kenseth’s championship indirectly altered the legacies of Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. It was essentially a statistically inferior version of Terry Labonte’s 1996 season and the Homestead engine failure with the title clinched didn’t help things. Plus the last season Winston sponsored the series…
Jeff and Terry both had 21 top 5s and 24 top 10s, the difference is outside those 7 races, Gordon had 6 of those 7 races outside the top 30, while Terry only had 1 outside of the top 30.
The way I look at the ideal way to decide a champion is not so much how many times they win races, but also where they finish when they don't. This is what made particularly the 1992 Winston Cup Championship battle so brilliant to watch. Precisely because of how unprecedented it was to have 6 drivers at least mathematically in contention for the championship going into the Finale that made it so exciting. Of them, Bill Elliott and Davey Allison had the wins but for each win they traded them for subpar finishes and or injuries, whereas Alan Kulwicki had only 2 wins, and after Dover seemed to be out of contention but relentless consistency thereafter saw him there to do just enough to clinch his only title by the smallest margin in the season long points battle era of NASCAR. 1996 was also pretty interesting I feel, Terry Labonte winning the title despite only recording 2 wins that year to Jeff Gordon's 10. What gave "The Ironman" the edge? He only had 2 finishes outside the top 20 all year and whenever Gordon wasn't winning races, finished a few more positions ahead of him
@chrisuncleahmad indeed, the lowest finishes are what tipped it in Labonte's favour. He had just 1 finish outside the top 30 (a 34th in round 2 at Rockingham), whereas Jeff Gordon, in an uncharacteristically inconsistent year for him, had 6 (42nd at the Daytona 500, 40th at Rockingham, 33rd at Talladega, 34th at New Hampshire, 37th at Indy and 31st at Charlotte)
The 2003 season was a GREAT season and NASCAR foolishly overreacted. Nobody who finished in the top 10 in points that year other than Newman had won more than 3 races. In fact only 2 drivers not named Newman won more more than 2 Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. The thing with Newman winning so many races were due to the hard compound tire that allowed drivers to run on them forever and just work on fuel mileage. Matt Boyland and Ryan Newman just figured it out quicker than others did. But when 2004 came around and they changed the tire back to being soft we NEVER saw what the 12 team did that year winning all those races on fuel EVER again. NASCAR simply goofed and NEVER should have destroyed the championship system.
100% overreaction by NASCAR with the points system. Sure it was good for the short term (the 4 or 5 years) , but with so many changes to the Chase/Playoff format, no matter how simple one can try to make it, it's just too many different points variations to keep track of. Short term success, long term failure, that's NASCAR'S current format in a nutshell
@@sabastianmoore6160I don't think it was ever good. Kurt Busch as much as I love him DID NOT deserve that 04 title. That was clearly either Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson or Dale Jrs to lose as they won 19 of the 36 races just to lose to a ten race deal where Kurts stats were FAR from impressive to even those three I aforementioned. Tony Stewart in 2005 would have won it under any system but he got fortunate to win it but in all seriousness never should have been in that position to "reprove" himself after destroying the competition during that summer where he won 5 outta 7 races and all but ended it until the reset at Richmond. 2006 ended Johnson and Matt were in it all year but Tony never should have been locked out of the top 10. 2007 was an embarrassment as Jeff Gordon was done awful. I know Johnson was great but come on he wasn't catching Jeff Gordon that year. Nobody was. But the chase did. The chase and non traditional race format just put NASCAR in a bizzarrow world where it became increasingly hard to tell the difference between a Lion and Mickey Mouse. Even today you can see many drivers won't say it but they are indifferent to winning the "title" and just want race wins. And even now thats a joke regarding the points because you can finish second and score more points than the winner. Lol
Consistency is more impressive than wins. Finnish F1 driver Keke Rosberg won the 1982 F1 championship with only 1 race win. Curiously, another Finnish F1 driver Kimi Räikkönen got very close to repeating the feat in 2003, when he won only 1 race, and ended up losing the championship by only 2 points.
I'm honestly glad the Chase was created, though these moments of the Winston era are pretty cool anyways. Although I am disappointed about the playoffs... should've kept the chase.
Now looking back, this was the last season I really paid attention to nascar cup racing, I would call it Winston cup racing, I did watch it 2004 with the new playoff format, was curious, but in 2004 is when I started to loose interest and have not watch nascar in like 15 years was not a fan of the playoff system, and now it comes down to one race, and which driver is basically lucky that day.
love your content, great stories covered, the thing I would say is to try to cut some of the empty silences out, but otherwise keep up the great videos
The problem with Ryan Newman was that he was extremely inconsistent. He kept losing engines or crashing or cutting tires quite a bit. He had 5 more DNFs than Matt Kenseth did and Matt Kenseth had more top 10 than anybody in the season, even more than Ryan Newman. That is why Matt Kenseth is the 2003 Winston Cup Champion and not Ryan Newman. Matt Kenseth was simply more consistent than Ryan Newman was. If Ryan Newman didn’t have so many crashes like he did and gotten an average of at least 15th in those races, he would’ve easily beaten Matt Kenseth. Matt Kenseth also had a very strong start to 2003 and he never gave it up. He only had two DNFs in the entire season. Talk about consistency. Kenseth earned his 2003 title without bullshit. Even Jeff Gordon was more consistent than Ryan Newman was but Jeff had a disastrous August 2003. If it wasn’t for that, Jeff Gordon could’ve possibly contended for Matt Kenseth and the title. August 2003 really did Jeff Gordon in badly. He lost positions to Kenseth in six straight races, including a crash in the Southern 500. Let’s say Jeff Gordon finished top 10 in at least two or three August races he could’ve had a shot at Matt Kenseth
I think the bigger issue from 2003 is that winning felt like it didn't matter. Forget Newman, the 2nd winningest driver that year- Kurt Busch with 4- was 11th. That's two drivers winning 1/3rd of your races! It felt like there was no incentive to win a race that year.
