NASCAR mailbag: Regardless of weather, should Chase races always run the full distance?

Each Wednesday SB Nation’s NASCAR reporter Jordan Bianchi answers your questions about the latest news and happenings within the sport. If you have a mailbag question email jordanmbianchi@gmail.com.

Has NASCAR done anything not to call races earlier? I get that’s standard procedure, but with Texas being a Chase race, it just doesn’t feel right not to run it to the full distance. Isn’t there a better alternative?

-- Shawn

The only option on the table would’ve been to wait out Sunday’s rain, then resume the final 40 laps whenever conditions allowed. That’s an unrealistic scenario when you consider the inclement weather continued well into Monday, how long it takes to dry Texas Motor Speedway (upward of three hours), and that teams had to travel to Phoenix for this weekend’s race.

These factors added together left NASCAR little recourse but to declare Carl Edwards the winner. Certainly not an ideal set of circumstances to see such a key race conclude, though it’s not as if Edwards wasn’t deserving. This wasn’t a Chris Buescher situation where a small team with a minute chance of winning used strategy and a fortuitous break to end up in victory lane and snag an unlikely playoff berth.

Edwards had a strong car throughout the night, and when his pit crew absolutely needed to execute it did with a superb stop that got him ahead of Martin Truex Jr. for a lead Edwards refused to relinquish through determined driving. Even taking into account Mother Nature’s assist, he more than earned it.

To minimize instances where a Chase for the Sprint Cup event is cut short due to rain, every track has a mechanism in place to dry the racing surface as quickly as possible. And despite the creation and full-time utilization of Air Titans -- something NASCAR deserves all the credit in the world for developing -- drying Texas’ asphalt in any reasonable amount of time is a near impossibility because it’s so old and worn. Rain will always be an uncontrollable element, but to take a minimum of three hours to dry a 1.5-mile oval is ludicrous and simply cannot happen. That’s exactly why TMS president Eddie Gossage readily admits a repave is inevitable, even if drivers adamantly oppose the idea.

Nothing is really going to come of this Kevin Harvick-Austin Dillon thing and it’s really much ado about nothing, right? I can’t believe Dillon really thinks Harvick, who’s racing for a championship and badly needs a win, would wreck him intentionally because of what happened when Harvick was at RCR. Doesn’t make any sense.

--Rich

In the heat of the moment, it’s understandable why Dillon labeled Harvick responsible for sending him crashing into the Turn 4 wall.

The two share a contentious past due to how Harvick’s long stint with Richard Childress Racing, the team owned by Dillon’s grandfather, ended in 2013 -- including Harvick stating publicly Childress favored his grandkids over the betterment of RCR’s Sprint Cup program.

Then Dillon was further incited by his crew chief, Slugger Labbe, instantly saying over the radio that what Harvick did was deliberate and Dillon needed to seek retribution at Phoenix. A veteran crew chief imploring a young, sometimes hotheaded driver to get revenge is naturally going to elicit the exact kind of reaction Dillon gave to NBCSN upon pulling into the garage.

But in speaking with both his team and later NBCSN, Harvick was adamant he did not purposely rear-end Dillon and put him in the wall. From his vantage point, it was a racing incident where the No. 3 car slid in front of him and he couldn’t slow down quick enough to avoid contact. And according to the Twitter feeds of Labbe and Rodney Childers, Harvick’s crew chief, they’ve spoken and there is no lingering animosity.

What I’ve come to realize about the Chase is my problem with it is not that it’s a gimmicky way to crown a champion, but 10 races is too many. If NASCAR wants contrived drama then why not decrease the number of races so drivers have even more reason to go hard?

-- Kevin

An interesting suggestion that would magnify the consequences for bad finishes by providing fewer opportunities to score a round-advancing victory, which would certainly ratchet up the intensity and generate more of the Game 7 moments NASCAR CEO and chairman Brian France sought when instituting the knockout Chase format in 2014.

This would also counter the drivers’ realization that consistency still matters a great deal, and as long as they can avoid disastrous results that place them in points deficits that can only be overcame via winning, qualifying for the next bracket is rather straightforward. That’s especially true in the first two rounds, where 75 percent (Round 1) and 66 percent of the field transfers.

But this idea presents new challenges. Even though the emphasis on winning is raised to even greater levels, teams may become even more inclined to race conservatively, lest they risk putting themselves in an unrecoverable situation. That would be a further departure from the ethos of what the elimination-style format is supposed to represent.

Then there is the question of what becomes of the Chase’s meaningfulness if there are just two races per round, not three, as this would seemingly turn the playoffs into even more of a crapshoot than they sometimes already appear to be.

One option worth exploring is the reduction of four rounds to three while increasing the number of eliminations from four per round to six. Therefore you’d still have four drivers advancing to the one race -- a de facto winner-take-all championship final -- while not having a playoff stretch across 10 weeks and go against the NFL, World Series, and college football in an often losing television ratings battle.