NASCAR insiders, Bob Pockrass react to controversial Mamba Smith championship take

NASCAR insiders and Bob Pockrass had some interesting things to say about a championship take made by Mamba Smith. On the Door Bumper Clear podcast, Pockrass, an insider for Fox Sports, joined co-hosts Freddie Kraft and Tommy Baldwin, and all three reacted to Smith saying that the point of the championship is to crown the best team and not the best driver.

“Mamba had a moment of poor decision-making, I think at this point,” Kraft said. “You never want to say the point is not to crown the best driver as the champion. …I didn’t see many people agreeing with him. Yes, the idea is to crown the best team as the champion. But at the end of the day, the driver is the champion, and you want to see the best driver in your series be your champion.”

Pockrass shared his thoughts on the championship format. “The point is that’s why there’s all the discussion of how to crown the champion,” he said. “The question is does this system even do that? Because anything can happen. As I always said, this isn’t like other sports. The ball doesn’t deflate when you throw it.”

Did Mamba Smith make a point about the the NASCAR championship?

Baldwin asked did the best driver win the championship when there was no playoff format? Kraft answered that the most consistent driver won the title, and for the current playoff format, the “team is more of an important factor than the driver sometimes.”

Baldwin later added, “At the end of the day, we talk about the driver winning the championship, but it is the team. …Everything today is a team sport. The driver gets the most recognition and gets talked about, but it wasn’t for us, the spotter, the pit crews, and the people at the shop, and the people that are making all the decisions in office, it’s a lot that goes into this.”

After the Richmond race, Smith went to X/Twitter and wrote, “The point isn’t to crown the best driver… It’s to crown the best team who executed the best when the pressure was at its highest and the lights were the brightest.” He was responding to a fan who said the point of the championship is to crown the best driver.

We’ll see which driver/team will win this year’s NASCAR Cup Series championship when the playoffs begin on Aug. 31. The playoff field will be set after the final race of the regular season, which will take place at Daytona this Saturday night.