A point about points

With huge gaps in reporting since the season finale at Chicagoland, you might have been wondering what happened to ESPN.com’s John Oreovicz. As it turns out, he’s had his nose to the grindstone, burning up the calculator. With the last three IndyCar series championships finishing so close as to remain mathematically undetermined until literally the final lap of the season, Oreo has taken the time to calculate who might have been the champion had the IRL used a different scoring method.

Fun stuff for wonks. Here’s what we’ve got for theoretical champions:

Old F1 (points for Top 6 only)
2006: Sam Hornish Jr
2007: Scott Dixon
2008: Scott Dixon

New F1 (points for Top 8 only)
2006: Helio Castroneves
2007: Scott Dixon
2008: Scott Dixon (tie-breaker over Helio Castroneves)

CART (points for Top 12, “most laps led”, “pole position”)
2006: Helio Castroneves
2007: Dario Franchitti
2008: Helio Castroneves

Champ Car (over-officious gibberish)
2006: Dan Wheldon
2007: Dario Franchitti
2008: Helio Castroneves

N-Word (points for all entries, “most laps led”, “any lap led”)
2006: Dan Wheldon
2007: Dario Franchitti
2008: Scott Dixon

Now, not to be ungrateful to Oreo for all of his hard work but these 2006 calculations are, well, meaningless because competition in the final race was stultified by the existing scoring system. (That’s right, I said “stultified”. I’ve got a dictionary and I’m not afraid to use.) Dan Wheldon raced to the lead at Chicagoland, but teammate Scott Dixon was ordered to yield and finish behind him. Behind them Sam Hornish Jr was content to race around in third because he would clinch the championship from that position. Once Helio Castroneves had been penalized for speeding in the pits (Helio penalized? Go figure!) and taken out of contention early in the race, it was little more than a high-speed parade for the leaders.

But on most days Oreo is a reporter, and as such he’s got some actual news tucked neatly at the end of the article. Here’s Brian Barnhart discussing how he wants to get wiggy with the current system.

"As we move toward a more diversified schedule, the IndyCar Series is the truest test of a driver in the world," he said. "We just finished rule-book meetings, and one of the things we considered is more points for pole at road and street course meetings. It may be appropriate to award points for our Firestone Fast Six knockout format, and we're looking at that as a change for 2009."

Hold the phone, Mr IHJ. You wanna do what? Fasted qualification has it’s own merits, like say starting at the front and getting a nice supplemental check, but you’re talking about giving points for something that isn’t derived from performance during the race. Come on, even the N-Word doesn’t do that.

If I may be analogous (shout out to Noah Webster), here’s why: Suppose a bunch of single buddies get together for a night on the town, and one of them comes home without so much as a phone number. Do the other hypothetical buddies give said buddy credit for having the nicest clothes or the most pleasant cologne or showing up at the meeting place first? I don’t think so.

Racing is about racing, and by racing I mean racing during the race. Giving points for anything else diminishes the objective, which is to race on race day. At least that’s the case for all of those other series Oreo listed that are currently in existence.