 by Julian Spivey
Juan Pablo Montoya led the IndyCar Series point standings for every single moment of the 2015 season until the checkered flag flew at Sonoma Raceway on Sunday, August 30 and he found himself tied atop the standings with Scott Dixon, and a loser as the tiebreaker for the championship went to Dixon for winning the most races on the season as Dixon had just wrapped up his third victory. Now, before I continue it’s important to note this and the fact that I’m fully aware of it: “take double points away this season and Dixon still wins the title 482 to 478” according to motorsports journalist Eric Smith. That being said … double points in IndyCar Series races are an absolute gimmick and need to go. Double points paying races are an incredibly bad idea, because in many instances they could lead to a champion who’s much lesser deserving than another driver simply because a driver performed better in the double points paying races. One driver could pretty much win an entire championship just by winning all three double points races or even two of them so long as they remain within a certain distance of the points lead. Double points paying races don’t really even make much sense. Fans don’t seem to care anymore about these three races that pay twice the amount of points per finishing spot. The entire reason for having these events is to throw an added bonus or gimmick into the championship fight. But, there’s a better chance of a driver getting an unfair advantage or disadvantage due to this system than there is it benefiting the title hunt in any way. It’s just another sign of big time professional motorsports leagues devaluing their championships by throwing a unique change into the system. NASCAR knows this all too well, as they’ve tinkered with their championship format so much that they’ve basically made the championship meaningless – as was proven last season when Ryan Newman came one spot shy of winning a title without winning a single race. In NASCAR, four drivers go into the final race of the season and the highest finisher wins the title regardless of anything that’s happened in the previous 35 races of the season. Now, IndyCar hasn’t become as ridiculous as NASCAR, which sold out fairness and consistency for exciting more than a decade ago and it’s just gotten worse ever since, but double points paying races does make things a little less fair than they should be. The only truly fair way to run a motorsports championship is solely by most points and the points should remain the same for each position in every race. That’s apparently not exciting enough for the folks who run these racing leagues and perhaps it’s not exciting enough for the majority of fans, but anything other than that could and frequently does lead to a champion who might not be the most deserving. As a little bit of a side note: IndyCar really should adopt the points per position system that NASCAR uses, in order to make things easier to understand for its fans and a little more interesting from race to race.
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