It’s time for NASCAR to embrace a radical idea and drastically overhaul its points system.
The vulnerabilities of the current playoff system were on full display once again on Sunday in Martinsville, as Chevrolet drivers refused to pass William Byron in the final laps and Christopher Bell bounced off the wall multiple times as he passed a suddenly slowing Bubba Wallace on the final lap.
Bell’s pass of Wallace got him into the final four for about 20 minutes, before NASCAR deemed that the move was a “safety violation.” Bell was moved down in the running order and Byron joined race winner Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano and Tyler Reddick in the group of four drivers that will race for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series title at Phoenix on Nov. 10.
NASCAR ditched its full-season points format in 2004 in favor of a 10-race postseason that featured the best drivers from the first 26 races. At the time, NASCAR was the fastest-growing sports series in the country and had designs on challenging the NFL for top billing among American sports fans. The final race of the 2003 season — a race that didn’t matter for the title because Matt Kenseth had clinched the championship a week before — had over 7.3 million viewers.
That playoff format has evolved multiple times in the two decades since it was implemented. First it was expanded to 12 drivers from 10 and then expanded again to 16 in 2014 when NASCAR decided that the 10 races needed to be broken up into four different rounds with a winner-take-all race involving four finalists.
After chaos reigned for three seasons and small sample sizes had too big of an impact, the playoff system was changed again in 2017 with the introduction of stage points. The four rounds remained, but drivers would be allowed to carry over bonus points from race and stage wins in the hope of having four of the season’s best drivers duking it out for the title in the final race.
That’s the format that still exists today. And after seven years, it needs to go away. NASCAR’s teams and manufacturers have gotten too good at gaming the system.
Just look at how the final laps at Martinsville unfolded. As Byron found himself just one position from losing his spot in the final four as the only Chevrolet representative he had two Chevy drivers behind him in Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon. Neither driver qualified for the postseason, though they appeared to have faster cars than Byron in the waning laps.
Neither driver made a move on Byron. Instead, both drivers raced side-by-side with each other as Byron paced ahead of them.
As it was clear Byron wasn’t going to get passed by the drivers behind him, Toyota driver Bubba Wallace radioed to his crew that he had a tire going down. As Blaney’s final lap took approximately 21.4 seconds, Wallace’s final lap lasted 24.9 seconds.
That allowed Bell, also a lap down, to pass Wallace in Turns 3 and 4. As Bell made the move, his car got visibly loose and he slammed into the wall. He hit the wall again and again as he gassed it to the finish line and didn’t gain any spots.
The pass appeared to get him into the playoffs. But NASCAR had seen a similar move before. In 2022, Ross Chastain floored his car into the outside wall to sneak into the title race. After the season, NASCAR said that moves like Chastain’s would no longer be allowed going forward.
Bell’s move wasn’t exactly like Chastain’s. But that wasn’t good enough for NASCAR, who put Byron back into the final four at Bell’s expense.
No penalties were immediately assessed to Wallace, Chastain or Dillon. And who knows, Maybe NASCAR will do some digging and penalize them during the week. After all, the sanctioning body does have a rule that specifies that drivers and teams must try to get their best possible finish in an event.
Longtime NASCAR fans will vividly remember why that rule exists. In 2013, Clint Bowyer spun on purpose at Richmond to try to get his Michael Waltrip Racing Martin Truex Jr. into the playoffs. In the days after the race, NASCAR kicked Truex out of the playoffs and added both Ryan Newman and Jeff Gordon to the field while expanding the playoff field from 12 to 13.
The race manipulation scandal was massive. And Sunday made it clear that teams and manufacturers are still manipulating races in a similar fashion.
Not much has changed since Bowyer spun 11 years ago. A year later, Ryan Newman dumped Kyle Larson at Phoenix to get to the championship race. Kevin Harvick made quite the suspicious move at the end of a Talladega playoff race in 2015, though he denied ever seeing Trevor Bayne before hitting Bayne’s car. In 2022, Cole Custer was penalized 50 points for slowing to let teammate Chase Briscoe by in an elimination race. Those examples are far from the only ones too. After the August race at Daytona, Xfinity Series driver Parker Retzlaff admitted that he didn't intend to push Ford driver Harrison Burton to the win and an automatic spot in the playoffs.
Let's be clear: you can’t blame teams and drivers from doing what they could to help each other. They're heavily incentivized by NASCAR's current monetary system. Playoff teams make significantly more money than non-playoff teams at the end of the season. And the manufacturer's title is still an important aspect of racing.
But racing is also a large sample-size sport like baseball is. And NASCAR's current four-round playoff format gives teams too much opportunity to manipulate small sample-size races.
NASCAR teams are incredibly smart and prepare for nearly every scenario. And it's much easier to prepare for scenarios in a three-race playoff round than over a full 36-race season.
As NASCAR's TV ratings have fallen precipitously over the past decade, it's clear that the playoff system isn't drawing casual viewers. Last season's winner-take-all title race had just over half the viewers that "meaningless" season finale did in 2023.
NASCAR has nothing to lose by changing its playoff format once again. Casual fans are clearly not leaving NFL games for playoff races. A good compromise would be a return to the 10-race playoff format of the 2000s. But an even better and fairer solution for all involved would be a season-long title race like Formula 1 and IndyCar have. Yes, both of those series have smaller TV ratings than NASCAR does in the United States, but race fans will tune in for good, hard racing, whether a title is on the line or not.
NASCAR's audience at this point is strictly race fans. It owes its drivers and teams the opportunity to show who is the best over the full season. And not just can be best at gaming the system in the fall.