That certainly seems to be the conventional thinking under the new championship format for NASCAR's premier series, one that promises to award the bulk of playoff berths to drivers who have won races during the sport's 26-event regular season. These days, drivers don't just celebrate race victories -- they celebrate virtually guaranteed spots in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. "If everybody is telling the truth, we should be in it, so I'm not going to worry about it," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said of the Chase, just three minutes and 23 seconds into his media session following his Daytona 500 victory. And indeed, winners in subsequent weeks echoed that sentiment -- they were now free to be aggressive, to not worry about points, to think more about the smaller picture that the bigger one. More...