Bob Pockrass
FOX NASCAR Insider
As Joey Logano continues to celebrate his 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship, the question remains: Should NASCAR overhaul, or at least adjust, its playoff format?
Logano was the first driver to finish 15th or worse in a regular season to make it to the Championship 4 let alone win the title. His heroics have created a conversation about whether the regular season should mean more.
As the Next Gen car seems to have upped the ante, does more emphasis need to be placed on winning in a 26-race regular season and/or 10-race playoff divided into three rounds of three races to produce four. drivers who qualify for the title at the end of the season.
“The message we’re trying to send is that the regular season is very important,” said team owner and driver Denny Hamlin. “Those 26 races – it shows that it’s not that important to win the championship, and that’s not what you want.
“My message to NASCAR would be, ‘Make the regular season more important.’ … Because right now, the last three years, you can say the champion shouldn’t have done much in the regular season, and that’s probably not good.”
Logano won one race in the regular season but then won three in the playoffs. Two years ago, when he won this title, he finished second in the regular season with two wins but then won twice in the playoffs. Last year, Penske teammate Ryan Blaney won once in the regular season but twice in the playoffs.
The last time the winningest driver in a regular season won the title was in 2021 when Kyle Larson won five regular seasons and then won five more races in the playoffs. That was the last season of the previous generation car before NASCAR went to Next Gen, where all the chassis and many other parts came from a single source supplier rather than the teams building them.
“The points format should be reflected in the win, and the qualifiers should be the last race, and it should be,” said 2012 Cup champion Brad Keselowski. “I have a hard time as a competitor and a fan of the sport, understanding how drivers who win many times often don’t win championships.
“I just don’t think that sounds right to me.”
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In some sports, the winning team does not win the title. But Keselowski said since all drivers compete year-round, the comparisons aren’t really fair.
“We’re not the NFL,” Keselowski said. “We keep getting stuck compared to other sports.”
Keselowski noted that his media partners love the playoff format. The fan base seems divided. NASCAR says the playoffs will remain in place – the playoff format began 20 years ago after Matt Kenseth clinched the title with one win and one race remaining in the season where drivers’ points throughout the season determined the champion.
“We will absolutely look at what the playoffs look like in the offseason,” NASCAR Chief Operating Officer Steve O’Donnell said last month during the season-ending race weekend in Phoenix. “He is always studying. … You can’t argue with the level of runs that happened in the playoffs.
“You can talk about the format if we do different things, but we will stick to it [the playoffs].”
Blaney said he would prefer two rounds of five races with 16 drivers to open the playoffs and cut eight drivers in the final round. He’ll give up a lot of points to win and he thinks that could make things more competitive. He said the teams will always stick to the format.
“I want to see a bunch of races to end the year where you can’t run away,” said Blaney. “Three to five races in, and you’re still going to have some really good competition going on.
“It’s not like I’m standing in the front wanting this playoff thing to change. It is what it is. I think maybe something has changed for them to think about.”
Roger Penske, who owns the Logano and Blaney teams, also owns the IndyCar Series, which continues to support its champion in points earned throughout the season. Its championship (17 races) came down to the last race this year. Formula 1 enters its 24th final race of the year this weekend when the championship is decided in Las Vegas with two races to go.
Penske noted that Team Penske has won 10 of the last 24 events of the year including the All-Star Race and Harrison Burton’s win at Daytona for Penske in partnership with Wood Brothers Racing.
“We all signed up for the points program at the beginning of the year, right?” Penske said. That’s what we operate on. We have been there for changes many different times.
“We’ll let NASCAR get on with it. If they think they need to make some changes, fine. But I think if someone says they’re winning three in a row, they’ve got to make some changes.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He spent decades covering motorsports, including more than 30 Daytona 500s, working for ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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