By Bob Pockrass
NASCAR will complete its 2020 season with the same number of races as originally scheduled, but with the driver who has the most wins this year not among the four championship contenders.
It's been a strange year, indeed.
The 2020 season, impacted dramatically by COVID-19, appeared to be a year made for a veteran duo such as Kevin Harvick and crew chief Rodney Childers, the longest driver-crew chief combination in the sport at seven seasons. With no practice and no qualifying for all but one of the 31 races conducted after a nine-week hiatus because of the pandemic, they used their experience to enjoy a better season than anyone else on the circuit.
That was until last Sunday, when Harvick was among the four eliminated from the semifinal round, despite his nine wins. After a second-place finish at Kansas, he crashed on the wet surface at Texas and then had a bad day at Martinsville, resulting in his missing the cut.
"I’ve been punched in the gut a lot harder," Harvick said. "We won nine races, had a great year, and ... the championship is kind of a bonus.
"It would be great to win it, obviously, but I’d rather go through the year and win races and do the things that we did and just came up short."
That is the way drivers will look at the championship. Denny Hamlin (seven wins this year), Brad Keselowski (four), Chase Elliott (four) and Joey Logano (three) – the only multiple-race winners this year other than Harvick – will compete for the title, with the best finisher among them Sunday at Phoenix earning the 2020 Cup title.
Logano and Elliott won races in the semifinal round, which resulted in them earring bids they likely wouldn’t have earned on points — and knocking Harvick out.
"Would [Harvick] take a three‑win season and make it to the final four and not winning a championship over nine wins and not making the final four?" Hamlin said. "I wouldn't. I would take the nine wins and move on. It's been a great season [for Harvick]."
Hamlin has repeatedly said making the championship round should be the goal because a one-race championship format has too many variables. He seems sincere in saying that, but he also has 44 career Cup wins and no championship on his resume.
Harvick won the title in 2014, the first year NASCAR implemented the elimination-style, one-race championship format.
"The championship is not necessarily an indicative measuring stick of your whole year," Hamlin said. "If you get to the final four, that is a measuring stick that you've had a successful year.
"This is going to be a great weekend and we're going to live with the result, no matter what it is, and I just want to enjoy it and have fun with it."
The drivers should be happy that Harvick didn’t advance, as he would have been one of the favorites at Phoenix to win the championship.
"I can only imagine the frustration of that situation," Logano said "But it is the playoffs. It is what it is at this point.
"I would be disappointed if I was him. But I think at the same time, you got to look at the season he had. You can't be too disappointed with that many wins."
The change in the format in 2014 was designed to create "Game 7" moments, such as Elliott’s victory at Martinsville in a must-win situation.
Elliott had never had a short-track victory before Sunday and had never advanced to the Championship 4.
‘"The big one I take away is, especially after a year like Kevin had, nothing's guaranteed," Elliott said. "You really have to put emphasis on trying to perform at the right time and hoping that you can put all the pieces together.
"I'm certainly not taking it for granted. It's a big deal, a great opportunity for us. To have won four races this season I think is something we've never done before. That's also a great achievement for us. Hopefully we can try to get one more before it's over with."
That philosophical approach appears the same for the drivers when looking at the season as a whole amid the pandemic. The regular season did have four race locations change. NASCAR eliminated races at Chicagoland, Sonoma, Richmond and Watkins Glen, and made them up with Darlington (twice), Charlotte and a new race at the Daytona road course.
NASCAR also eliminated practice for all races and qualifying for all but one event. It had doubleheader weekends at Dover and Michigan, and midweek races at Darlington, Charlotte and Martinsville. It eliminated both off weeks scheduled during the summer so it was able to have the playoffs run as scheduled.
Drivers didn’t see the frenetic pace of the schedule as a determining factor, nor did they see it as a reason to question the validity of the season.
"The rules didn't change in the middle of the year, you know what I mean?" Logano said. "Maybe our schedule changed, the way we go about it. It’s the same for everybody.
"A championship is a championship. It doesn't matter if you won it in 2020 when you had no practice or you won it in 2019 or 2021."
Drivers actually hope some of the changes remain. They will get 28 races next year with no practice nor qualifying.
"I know that at the very root cause of what we've done to the schedule and why we are where we're at is a fair amount of pain for different people, and I don't enjoy that at all and don't want anyone to misconstrue anything I say," Keselowski said.
"But conversely, I've really enjoyed this year, enjoyed the schedule, enjoyed the chance to show up at the race track on any given weekend, have great wins, go out and win and not be sitting in your bus for three days, but just go hard and go compete."
