Bottom post of the previous page:
When Kenseth won the Cup title he did it with only one win from the 36 races, and he only fluked into the Las Vegas win cos whoever was in front of him ran out of fuel at the end.Actually, what he did back then, is the reason for the Chase we have now as France went apeshit that Kenseth could win being Mr Consistent and poor old Ryan Newman won seven times (I think) and lost, he completely ignored the fact that Newman ended up on his roof more times than Kenseth won races that year, and because simple old Brian couldn't work out consistency paid more than raw speed and wrecks, he assumed the rest of the word were as thick as him and voila, invented the Chase.