NASCAR made the decision this year to pull the plug on Sprint Cup regulars being able to win the Nationwide title. It makes sense as no other sport allows it’s star athletes to compete in lower divisions to win titles. Then again no other sport has the time or in the case of the NFL ability to play it’s marquee names two or three times a week.
The result was NASCAR allowing Cup regulars to participate in Nationwide events but prohibbiting them from capturing the end of season championship.
The result thus far this year has been a series standings that hardly reflects what is going on with the drivers on the track.
Combined the drivers who are in the top-10 in points have 5 top-5 finishes on the year. Two of them came from points leader Reed Sorenson. They have 14 top-10’s in 30 combined starts.
It’s also quite possible that the end of year Champion may not even win a race, or perhaps only one. So much for the ‘we need a champion who wins’ idea NASCAR has pushed for so hard on TV.
I’ll concede that Sorenson, Trevor Bayne, Justin Allgaier, Ricky Stenhouse Jr and former cup driver Elliott Sadler all could win a race but combined how many events do you think the Nationwide full time drivers will win when compared to the Cup guys? Odds are Kyle Busch will outscore them all by himself.
Last year Justin Allgaier and Boris Said were the only two drivers not on the Sprint Cup circuit full time to win a race at the Nationwide level.
If a similar story develops this year what will the reactions be?
Tony Eury Jr said that finishing inside the top-15 was pretty easy in the Nationwide Series, the sad thing is finishing inside the top-15 a few times will result in one of these guys being crowned a champion.
For what it’s worth I’m hoping Sorenson can find his way to the winners circle at-least once this year and give one of the Nationwide only teams the series title.
