Jeff Gordon announced Thursday that 2015 will be his final full-time season in the sport, meaning he has only one chance left to conquer NASCAR’s new playoff format. Since NASCAR introduced the Chase in 2004, Gordon has never won the championship and will now retire with either four or five titles, depending on his performance this year.

Gordon is a racing legend, there’s no doubt about that — but if NASCAR had never messed with the points format, Gordon would arguably be the greatest driver in NASCAR history.

Back in the pre-Chase days, each race on the schedule was weighted equally and the champion at the end of the season was often the driver who was the most consistent over the course of 36 races. There were no points resets with 10 races to go and no elimination rounds. Gordon won four championships under the classic points system, and after winning his fourth in 2001, it seemed possible if not likely that Gordon would match or surpass Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt’s record of seven series titles.

Everything changed in 2004, when NASCAR spiced up the end of the season to improve TV ratings by installing a playoff format, erasing the point advantages the top 10 drivers had worked for all season and making them start from scratch with 10 races to go. NASCAR has tinkered with the format over the last decade, and in 2014 made even more drastic changes, instituting a knockout format that leaves only four drivers eligible to win the title on the final day of the season.

In the process, NASCAR made it increasingly difficult to compare drivers across eras. Jimmie Johnson has six titles, but all six of them came in the Chase era. Tony Stewart is the only driver to win a championship under the old format and through the Chase.

One thing is clear: No driver has suffered from the Chase more than Jeff Gordon.

If you recalculate the points standings using the old pre-Chase format (as Jayski does each year), Gordon would be driving for his eighth series title in 2015, instead of being stuck on four.

In 2004, the first year of the Chase, Gordon finished 1st at the Brickyard to win his fifth race of the year and cap a 6-race streak of top-5 finishes. He was dominant all summer, but three Chase finishes outside the top 15 (including a disastrous 34th at Atlanta) ruined his season. He finished the season third, 16 points behind champion Kurt Busch. Under the old system, Gordon would have won his fifth title.

In 2007, Gordon once again breezed through the first two-thirds of the season. By August 12th at Watkins Glen, Gordon had finished outside the top 10 in just three of 23 races. At the end of the “regular season,” Gordon had a 312 point lead on second-place Tony Stewart, which would have been an insurmountable difference in the past. He started the chase behind Jimmie Johnson because he had fewer wins, and ended up finishing 77 points behind his Hendrick Motorsports teammate.

In 2014, Gordon was knocked out of championship contention by one point in the penultimate race of the year despite finishing second at Phoenix, and had to settle for fifth place in the standings. He finished the season with 23 top 10s, more than any other driver, to go along with four wins. Under the old format, Gordon would have joined Petty and Earnhardt with seven NASCAR championships. Instead, Kevin Harvick won his first.

The Chase may have helped make NASCAR more relevant during football season, but it also changed the course of history for one of its biggest stars