iNSIDE SCOOP: The Great Chase Experiment

With the first three races of the 2014 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup in the books, is the new format working for you?

That’s the big question.

Is it working for you? Do you like the format? Is it easier to follow, understand and get excited about?

For me, the answers are yes, it’s OK and yes.

The proof, as always, is in the pudding, and after three races, I’ve heard a jump in the buzz over the Chase, seen people worrying and fretting over their driver’s status in the 10-race playoff and wondering what the future holds.

The future, or as much of it as anyone can truly focus on, begins this weekend at Kansas, with the next two races at Charlotte and…wait for it…Talladega. 

Dover is a great track to have an elimination race. It’s big, fast and nasty, and you can get in trouble easily. When you do, there’s no place to go to get out of it, either. Shoot, the pit road makes even sardines claustrophobic. 

None of that happened on Sunday, but it could have. And it could have been big. Correction: it would have been big. It’s so fast in a point-and-shoot way that you can be minding your own darn business and still wind up with the steering wheel in your hands and a smoking wreck around you.

The four drivers who fell short of the cutoff—AJ Allmendinger, Aric Almirola, Kurt Busch and Greg Biffle—were the most likely to end up on the outside, and they did. Denny Hamlin made a monster comeback, and Kasey Kahne came from four laps down to advance by the skin of his teeth.

That’s drama, and that’s the first cutoff. The second cutoff, at Talladega, will be so far ahead of this one it’s not going to be funny.

Talladega is the ultimate crapshoot (see above, the part about the smoking wreck around you).  One guy gets out of line at the wrong moment and 24 cars are spinning and crashing and sliding and crunching…it’s mayhem of the first water.

You can’t make your own breaks at Talladega. You have to have help, and you have to be luckier than the wardrobe manager for the Swedish Bikini Team. You can win it all or lose it all, in one lap. Most of the 12 remaining Chasers hope they finish in the top 15 with all four wheels on the car. They’ll take that and run to Martinsville.

So, is it working for me? You bet. The next three ought to be a little more intense, a little more go-for-broke. That’s the kind of playoff NASCAR has needed, and that’s what it’s getting so far.

Agree or no?