NASCAR's France on Chase: 'We want what the Super Bowl just had'

Jeff Gluck | USA TODAY Sports

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WINTER PARK, Fla. — NASCAR was founded at a central Florida hotel. So, too, was the sport's new playoff format.

NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France hopes his brainchild, which premiered to rave reviews, will continue to blossom in central Florida when the 2015 season kicks off Sunday with the Daytona 500.

Now that drivers and fans are familiar with the revamped Chase for the Sprint Cup, which features three elimination rounds over 10 races and a winner-take-all finale, it's time to see where this version of the championship will take the sport.

"This stands on its head something that is so important to auto racing, which is consistency," France told USA TODAY Sports. "There's a reason the other auto racing guys all over the world haven't wanted to do this — they can't get past the tradition of the consistency model."

Taking risks and crafting bold ideas are necessary because, France said, "We're the underdog. We're not the NFL running around here on top of mountains. We're pushing uphill."

It might be hard to top the inaugural version, which resulted in one of the most exciting NASCAR seasons in history. There were fireworks on and off the track that generated headlines in a crowded sports landscape and a playoff that saw Kevin Harvick win his first title by one position.

At first, not everyone was sold on such a radical change. When he initially learned about the format, Harvick told NASCAR officials: "I think y'all are nuts."

After all, this isn't your father's NASCAR.

It's not France's father's NASCAR, either — and certainly not his grandfather's. The third-generation leader, 52, has been a constant advocate for change and innovation. It's not just about keeping NASCAR on top in terms of U.S. motor sports popularity but figuring out how to stand out in the broader sports and entertainment worlds.

But while the format mirrors that of other major sports leagues' playoffs, it wasn't a turnkey project. It came to fruition quickly an hour's drive from NASCAR's birthplace in Daytona Beach. Jan. 14, 2014, 26 NASCAR executives gathered in the boardroom of the Alfond Inn in Winter Park and were presented with the framework for what would become the revamped Chase.

They unanimously agreed to a system that de-emphasized so-called points racing and made winning the top priority — a radical departure from the traditional motor sports model.

When it came to thinking of ways NASCAR could improve its product, France kept coming back to what bothered him the most: The idea of drivers settling for consistent finishes instead of taking chances that could result in a win.

France said he despised points racing. Every time a driver would praise a fifth-place result, it was only minutes before a NASCAR executive's cellphone would ring with a disgusted France waiting to vent on the other end.

"I said to myself and my team over and over again: 'This (points racing) is not what we're going to be about,' " France said. "I said, 'I understand that's auto racing and it's not winner-take-all around here every day, but we're going to change this.' And that's what we did.

"People forget, we don't like to see a race that's less than exciting, just like anyone else. We don't want to have our championship mathematically decided well beforehand. We want what the Super Bowl just had — exciting, right down to the last play.

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Origins

It was the eve of his two-week Christmas vacation when John Bobo, NASCAR's managing director of racing operations, got the call at 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 17, 2013.

On the line was his boss, executive vice president Steve O'Donnell. He had just come from a meeting with France, who wanted to move forward with an elimination-style playoff. It was up to O'Donnell's team to come up with the best model.

"While we didn't have a template, we had a very long list of things we've talked about over the years," NASCAR senior vice president of racing operations Jim Cassidy said. "We weren't necessarily starting from scratch; some of the concepts had been discussed all the way back to (the original Chase in 2004)."

But France could never bring himself to go through with it. How could he change the format after Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards staged a sensational championship battle in 2011?

But in 2009 and 2010, NASCAR had conducted extensive research that showed fans were open to the elimination concept as well as ideas such as increasing the amount of playoff drivers, making winning more meaningful and resetting the points after each segment.

"I'm not shooting the gun off and hoping to hit something," France said. "We're reasonably certain jumping off that we think we can land on our feet."

Bobo and colleague Tom Swindell, NASCAR's senior director of racing operations, hunkered down to start running models for every conceivable scenario.

They took 10 years of racing data and applied them to variables such as number of races, number of drivers, number of eliminations, amount of bonus points and points resets. They tried it all: a format that cut the field from 16 to eight to four, a 15-10-five format and a 12-six format. There was a format where Chase drivers had their own points system and another where contenders would get bonus points for winning the pole.

While the research team understood drivers might have raced differently had the rules been changed, their stacks of notebooks made one thing clear.

"Elimination was the only thing where winning consistently made a difference," Bobo said. "And how we're going to have to do eliminations is to have it come down to that final moment in the final minutes to make a difference."

The winning format: 16 drivers and four rounds — a trio of three-race rounds where four drivers would be cut after each one and then a four-driver championship race. The points would be reset after every elimination; a win meant automatic advancement.

"One of the fundamental pillars was this has to be as simple as possible," O'Donnell said. "If you had a casual fan coming to a race and you had to explain it, could you do that? A lot of the models when we sat there and looked at it, it was, 'No way.' "

The Alfond

In the boardroom of the Alfond Inn, a Spanish-Mediterranean revival-style hotel as contemporary as the new Chase, with natural light bursting in from all corners and trendy modern art on the walls, NASCAR gathered its top-level executives for its annual officers' meeting to make the call on one of the biggest changes in its history.

France led the discussion from afar; a family emergency required him to return home, and he was participating via speakerphone from a hospital. After telling the executives of his plan — some were hearing about it for the first time — France turned the presentation over to O'Donnell, who described how the new Chase would work.

Not everyone seated at the U-shaped table was on board, but the holdup was mostly about timing. There were reservations about implementing the format for 2014, particularly because NASCAR would start 2015 with a new $8.2 billion TV deal (NBC replaces ESPN for the second half of the schedule this season). Some, such as NASCAR vice chairman Jim France and then-president Mike Helton (who has since become vice chairman), wondered if it would make more sense to wait.

"Even with people who are much more conservative and careful than I am, all of them said, 'We can do this; I just don't think we can do it now,' " Brian France said. "Once I heard that from the conservative group, then it's just execution — and I know we can do that."

The mood after making the decision was ebullient. After looking at all of the research and understanding what it might mean to change how the champion was decided, those in attendance departed riding a wave of energy and enthusiasm.

"The excitement from that meeting was, 'We've got something here,'" O'Donnell said. "Everybody felt like it was a game-changer. It just felt like a big moment for the sport that we could all get behind."

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Lockdown

France has little tolerance for excuses.

When he declared NASCAR would create a solution that would cut track-drying time by 80% and be completed in less than a year, an innovation that would become the Air Titan, someone told France that NASCAR employed no engineers on staff who could invent it.

"I said, 'Well, NASA is how far down the road?'" he recalled. "There are a bunch of laid-off guys laying around Satellite Beach, right? Drive 45 minutes, and you'll bump into somebody in a coffee shop that can help you. For God's sake, get going."

Similarly, France expected a quick response to the new Chase format. And there was much to be done in writing the policy, because, while the framework for the new system was set, the details weren't. And there were only four weeks until Daytona Speedweeks.

In the Bill France Boardroom on the eighth floor of NASCAR's building, with windows overlooking Turn 4 of Daytona International Speedway, the members of NASCAR's brain trust locked themselves in a room and hashed out the details in a 5-hour meeting Jan. 16.

There was intense discussion about the final four and the one-race playoff. Did NASCAR really want to take that dramatic of a step? The answer was clear.

Harvick was in one of the meetings a couple of weeks later when NASCAR began informing the rest of the industry after the details were buttoned up.

He suggested the eliminated drivers should still be allowed to race for as high as fifth place. NASCAR took Harvick's idea and made it policy.

Of course, there were nerves at times. Before the season finale, Cassidy wondered aloud about a worst-case scenario: What would happen if three of the four contenders wrecked on the first lap and the driver who won the championship finished 35th and waved to race control every lap?

"You hope that doesn't happen, but those are things that are out there," O'Donnell said. "It goes back to: Do you believe in it, do you believe that's right? And if that happens, can you defend how you got here? And we always felt that was the case."

Harvick has shared a laugh with officials about his "nuts" comment since winning the title. But like many in the industry who saw how it played out, he also has come around on the format.

While in Las Vegas for the postseason awards banquet, Harvick ran into France and told him the drivers stretched their performance further than they ever thought they could.

That was exactly what France wanted to hear. Because, after all, he'd spent his career listening to drivers say the opposite.

"In auto racing, you can go one of two ways," France said. "You can be a purist and not care much about how people commercially view things and your popularity. You're being pure to auto racing. And there's nothing wrong with that strategy.

"Or you can take what we do, which is take tradition and purity and put it through a filter and say, 'Wait a minute. We've got to make racing more exciting. We've got to compete with what's going on this weekend.' That's how we've chosen to look at it."

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