Here we are, just over two weeks away from the beginning of the 2006 NASCAR season and I cannot help but think that the Cup Series could take a lesson from the Trucks.Now I know what some of you are thinking. “How in the world could the Cup Series, NASCAR’s highest division, learn anything from the trucks?” Well, hear me out.

For the past two years the NASCAR Nextel Cup series has been working with a scoring system that has introduced a 10-week playoff for the final stretch of the season. I think this system is flawed in a number of aspects.

First, the idea of playoffs in racing is completely unnecessary. The concept of playoffs or a tournament is designed around a situation where there are multiple competitors or teams, yet only two individuals or teams can compete against each other at one time.This is the case with baseball, football, basketball and hockey. There are 30 teams in each league, 32 in the NFL, and it is impossible to have more than two of those teams face each other at one time.

In baseball, one team plays the field while the other one is at bat. A football field only has two end zones, a basketball court only two hoops, and no matter how exciting it would be to have all 30 teams on the ice at once, hockey only has two goals.

For this reason, the playoff concept was created. You let the teams play each other for a determined period of time -- the regular season -- see which teams have proven themselves, and they advance to the playoffs -- the post season.

In racing we have the blessing of not having to go through this process because each and every week all 43 drivers, 36 in the Truck Series, are on the track competing against each other simultaneously. We don’t have to wonder who was better that week, the Bears beating the Redskins or the Cowboys beating the Lions. At the end of our day the drivers and teams are all lined up very nicely from one to 43.

Another reason I don’t like the playoff format is because I want a real champion. Call me crazy, but I feel that the driver who scores the most points throughout the season should be the one who gets the trophy.

Here’s the problem. Whenever they talk about Kurt Busch as the 2004 Nextel Cup champion, my mind puts up a mental *. It’s almost like I hear someone say, “yeah, but he was only fourth in points for the season and Jeff Gordon should have won.”

This is completely unfair to Kurt Busch, who I like as a driver, because he won the championship under the current rules. It is also the reason I found myself rooting for Tony Stewart at the end of this past year - quite an abnormal occurrence for me -- because he simply had more points than the other guys.

With this current system, theoretically, the champion could have fewer points than any of the other nine drivers in the chase. I know it is unlikely, but do we want the possibility of someone barely squeaking into the chase and then putting together a non-spectacular but consistent 10 races winning the whole thing? I think not.

The third reason I have for disliking the playoff format is best shown by the Truck Series last year.

If the trucks had a seven-race chase, the same percentage of races as the Cup series, there are two drivers, Jimmy Spencer and David Reutimann, who would have been locked into the top 10 at the beginning of the chase. There are also two drivers, Jack Sprague and Johnny Benson, who would have been locked out of the top 10 at the beginning of the chase.

I think it is unfair to tell a driver like Sprague, who finished eighth in the final point standings, or Benson, who finished tenth, that no matter how good they do in the final portion of the season they can not improve their finishing spot to anything better than eleventh.

I also would have had another asterisk in my mind because third place Todd Bodine would have won the championship instead of Ted Musgrave.

We are told that the reason for the playoff style chase is to make the competition better, tighten up the field and make it closer at the end. When did NASCAR have to start creating artificial drama to make the championship exciting?

The other question is does this new style actually accomplish what it wanted, making the final point standings closer? No!

If the trucks had followed a seven-race chase similar to Cup, the final difference between first and second would have been 128 points. In reality the difference was only 55 points and the difference between first and third was only 73 points -- much closer than the chase format.

In 11 seasons, only once has the NASCAR Craftsman Truck series champion been determined before the final race. In every season except for 2000, there have been at least two, and on a couple occasions as many as four, drivers who could mathematically win the championship entering the final race.

This is the lesson to be learned from the trucks. Give us a real champion while still being able to keep the championship close without an artificial bunching system.

The question then becomes, what is it about the Truck Series that creates this incredibly close competition over the length of an entire season? The answer lies in the difference between the number of trucks and cars in the field of the Truck and Cup series.

In the Cup Series there are 43 cars in the field, whereas in the Truck Series there are only 36 trucks. Since both series use the same points systems, the Cup Series has a greater variance in points from 1st to 43rd than the Truck Series does from 1st to 36th.

What this means is that in the Cup Series the 1st place driver receives a minimum of 185 points while the 43rd place driver receives only 34 points, a difference of 151 points. With this wide spread in points it is very easy for a gap of 200 or more points to be created in the span of a couple races.

The Truck Series, on the other hand, only has a gap of 130 between 1st and 36th. This margin seems to be large enough for drivers to close a few-hundred-point gap like Musgrave did this year when he caught Dennis Setzer from over 200 points back with only a handful of races left. At the same time it seems small enough to keep any one driver from opening an insurmountable lead.

By this point you are probably wondering if I am suggesting that the Cup Series cut their field from 43 cars to 36. No, I am not. What I am suggesting would be to alter the Cup point system to deliver a 1st to 43rd point margin similar to that of the trucks.

The current system has a 10-point margin between 1st and 2nd. There is then a five-point margin between each of the positions down through 6th. After that, the margin shrinks to four points for each position through 11th, and then essentially three points for each position after that.

The solution would be to follow the integrated point scale one more step and change the margin to only two points per position after 21st. By following this plan, 43rd would now be worth 56 points, similar to the 55 points for 36th in the trucks.

While there is no guarantee that this will foster a closer run to the championship, it does have 11 years of proven results in the Truck Series.

I know the season is upon us and it seems a bit late to make a rule change, but as long as everyone knows the system before the first race, it is fair for all. Besides, NASCAR does not seem to have too much problem changing rules between races two or three times per year.

Another advantage would come into play for Sprint/Nextel. Since the merger it seems they have been trying to figure out a way to get the Sprint name out there more than Nextel, as seen by the lopsided amount of Sprint signage.

End this two-year experiment with playoffs and the Chase for the Nextel Cup. Go with the modified point system and rename the series the NASCAR Sprint Cup, together with Nextel.

Wait, did I just hear a pin drop?

David Abraham is an avid Craftsman Truck Series fan. Visit the site often for his thoughts on the rough and tumble trucks.