2004 NASCAR New Rules and Comments - The Chase

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"Jimmie's a mature guy," Knaus says. "The best thing about Jimmie is that he pays attention and listens. We don't plan to lose our focus. That's the worst thing we could do-change what we have been doing all along."

He simply wants Johnson to continue to score points.

Championship Chemistry
"I think our chemistry as a team and organization breeds the consistency side," Johnson says. "When I come in and explain what I'm feeling, he [Chad] comes in and works on it. I think our chemistry as a whole is the foundation of our team's success."

Knaus says it goes deeper than the driver and crewchief. "It's not what Jimmie and I do," he says. "It's what everybody at Hendrick Motorsports does. It's what everybody on the 24 and 48 team does. It's what Mr. Hendrick and Lowe's does for us. They allow us to go to them and say this is what we need. They give it all. That's something that a lot of teams don't get. If we don't put the pieces together, it's our fault."

The final round of "NASCAR Jeopardy" is the type of late-season battle that fits perfectly into Tony Stewart's style of finishing the year strong. "If you win races, the points take care of themselves," says Stewart, the 2002 Winston Cup champion who started that season's title run at Daytona mired in last place in points. But now, to attempt another late-season charge for the title, he must first get into the title fight.

Last year, for example, he would not have made the final run for the championship if this season's points system had been in place. He was 11th in points at the end of the fall race at Richmond-the cutoff for the dash to the title-and would have been shut out of the finals. But Stewart closed the '03 season by working his way up to Seventh.

Greg Zipadelli, Stewart's crewchief, says the new system could work in their favor. "Every year it seems like we have something that kind of sets us back a little bit through the mid-part of the season, but then we come on strong toward the end," he says. "I'd like to think that will benefit us a little more than most other people. But last year there were two or three other cars that ran exceptionally well the last third of the season, too. We'll just do what we've been doing."

In contrast to Stewart in 2003, Michael Waltrip was 10th after the Richmond race and would have finished there under the '04 system. Instead, he dropped five spots to end 2003 in 15th Place.

That was a similar situation for Kurt Busch, who was Eighth coming out of Richmond but lost some of his early-season strength and finished 11th at the end of the year. Meanwhile, Bill Elliott was 16th after Richmond and never broke into the Top 10 until four races from the end. Elliott finished Ninth.

Under the current system, neither Elliott nor Stewart would have been in contention, while Busch and Waltrip would have battled for the last two positions in the leader group.

There are lots of critics of the new system-and lots for them to criticize. Fans say there was nothing wrong with the old way points were counted. Last year the same system NASCAR scrapped for its Nextel Cup produced points battles that went down to the last lap of the last race in both the Craftsman Truck Series and the Busch Series.

When the checkered flag fell at Homestead last November, Brian Vickers was the Busch champion by 14 points over David Green. The Top 5 drivers were all within 49 points.

In the Craftsman Truck Series, the Top 4 drivers finished within 40 points, led by Travis Kvapil. Any one of the four could have become the champion in that last race.

The TV Factor
So, why create a special points system just for Nextel Cup? TV ratings are high on the list of reasons.

Traditionally, television ratings for NASCAR races begin to decline when the National Football League season begins. The ratings slump is heaviest in the major market areas that also support an NFL team.