Brown told Competition Plus of his distaste for the exclusivity of the playoffs.
“I feel the Countdown takes away from your year’s long worth of work,” Brown said. “It takes away the year-long achievement of what you see people doing and it stops the 11th-place guy from fighting the fight because he can’t make it into the top 10. That was his year-long goal, trying to make it into the top 10, and they just took that away from him.”
He suggested the NHRA cut the playoff field to eight drivers and reformat the final six events.
“The top eight, not 10. In any other sport that you play a true playoff, you have to have better than a .500 record to make the playoff. I think the top eight is where that cut line is in our sport,” Brown added. “Then those top eight cars in each professional category race for the championship where there’s only three rounds of racing, not four. And they still have to qualify (to set the brackets), but they’ll all make the show. That’s the bonus of when you make the playoffs, that you’re going to play in all the games.
“To give you a scenario, the New England Patriots don’t have to play the Cleveland Browns because they haven’t made the playoffs. How does a non-playoff car get to race a playoff car?”
Granted, both Torrence and Brown have benefited from the system. Both are champions in the Countdown era. And neither accused Force of not earning her title fairly. But that doesn’t mean they are keen about the system. Most racers have grumbled in private or simply shrugged off their inner pouts about it, preferring not to fight City Hall.
Blake Alexander, who nonchalantly stole some of Torrence’s 2018 thunder with his two victories and one semifinal finish in the first six of only 11 starts, proved it’s possible to run a part-time schedule and be competitive among the class’ elite. Had he not skipped the Seattle and Brainerd races and kept his momentum going, he might have qualified for the Countdown. Even before that, he had skipped nine races.
Had he entered even one-third of those, he surely would have made the playoffs and put himself in contention for the championship.
Alexander, who’s competing in Funny Car this season, claims he has no regrets.
“If I had made the Countdown, Steve Torrence still would have won the championship,” he said. “So it really doesn’t make a difference if I wasted money and went to a couple races that we didn’t have money for.”
This year, Alexander, who was only 226 points behind 10th-place Bob Tasca III after eight races, could go on another tear and qualify for the Countdown.
It wouldn’t be unprecedented. In 2017, Funny Car racer Shawn Langdon missed the first four races of the season before joining Kalitta Motorsports and finishing seventh in the final standings. The same year, Top Fuel’s Terry McMillen had 17 opening-round defeats and ended up being a top-10 contender. He finished the season in ninth place. On a similar note, Scott Palmer was 10th, despite 18 opening-round losses and six second-round exits.
In 2016, Torrence missed one race after suffering a heart attack but still finished third in the standings.
Mike Salinas skipped round seven of the series at Atlanta Dragway and fell out of the top five in points, but he wasn’t worried about missing the Countdown.
Torrence hinted after winning in April at Charlotte that he and his team would change their strategy, testing combinations and parts when possible and not concerning themselves about dominating until it counted.
Reigning Funny Car champion J.R. Todd said last fall, “If we can win four races in the Countdown, I think we can win this thing. My goal all along was to go into the Countdown in the top five to put us position to make a run for the title.”