Opinion: My new proposal for the NASCAR playoff system

As someone who was first drawn into motorsport by Formula 1, learning about the playoff system in NASCAR was a shock.

The idea that one race would determine the champion instead of points based on the full season didn’t make sense.

Now, I still do not believe the current Playoff format is the way to go.

Out of curiosity, I applied the NASCAR Playoff system to the 2024 F1 season and found it would have actually been Charles Leclerc as the Champion.

I ran the results with a sixteen-driver Playoff with two race rounds starting in Singapore, making changes to scoring as a 12th place in NASCAR and a 12th place in F1 are not equivalent.

Leclerc’s P3 in Abu Dhabi would have gotten him the title with Max Verstappen, George Russell, and Oscar Piastri as the other three contenders in the final round.

The real champion, Verstappen, didn’t win due to a poor final race, and the runner-up in Lando Norris, would have been eliminated in the Round of 8 due to only finishing 10th in Qatar.

While I personally would have loved Leclerc winning his first title, I can’t say that he should have been the winner.

I think there is a way for a Playoff format to work, but there are major issues with it as things stand.

I think the solution to the current flaws of the Playoff issue is a mix of the current system and a full-season system.

My solution has three major changes. Get rid of win-and-you’re-in, get rid of Playoff Points for a different Playoff system, and make winning more important in the regular season standings.

The first, and most controversial issue, is the win-and-you-re in rule.

Hypothetically, this could allow a driver to crash the car in thirty-one races, but win five at the right time and become the champion.

Would that driver be the best of the season? Obviously not.

We do not have to look far back to find this rule causing chaos, as 2024 is a perfect example.

In the regular season, Joey Logano finished 15th in points.

Despite being just barely in the top sixteen in the regular season and finishing 15th and 28th at two of the three Round of 16 races, he was able to advance to the Round of 12 due to winning in Atlanta.

Logano was able to get into the Round of 8 due to an Alex Bowman disqualification, and then proceeded to win in Las Vegas to clinch the Championship Round.

Kyle Larson was the most consistent driver all year, but he didn’t even make the Championship Round due to Logano snatching one of the four spots with his win.

Logano went on to win in Phoenix, and even though he would have ended 12th had they taken the regular season points format for the entire season, Logano was the 2024 Champion.

In a full-season points format, Logano would have finished closer to 20th-place driver Carson Hocevar than he did to Larson.

While win-and-you’re-in can cause unexpected champions like Logano, it also does not reward the most consistent drivers.

Another reason against the Playoffs is the sport’s high variance.

Even looking back to the most recent race in Las Vegas, William Byron, the regular-season champion, has been put in a deep hole due to an incident that was no fault of his own.

Ty Dillon’s spotter never communicated to Byron’s team that he was pitting, and Dillon never signaled that. Byron drove into the back of the #10 and out of the race.

He is now fifteen points below the cutline and is on the outside looking in of the Championship Four.

In a full-season points system, Byron would currently be tied with Larson, setting up an electric battle for the title that could be won by seven different drivers.

Getting rid of Playoff Points rewards drivers who are consistent all year and prevents one bad race from ruining a great season, like we could see with Byron this year.

In a full-season point system, they should also make a win more valuable.

If you give a win 50 or 55 points instead of the current 40, it will still cause teams to be more willing to take risks. Right now, the difference in points of P1 to P2 is the same as from P30 to P35.

If you make a win significantly more valuable points-wise than 2nd, it will cause more excitement from race to race and reward teams and drivers who can make bold decisions work.

Instead of the current format, where it goes from sixteen to twelve to eight to four to one, I am proposing a system where you have to be within a certain range of the leader in order to stay alive.

Keep the first 26 races the same, but where the Playoffs currently start, make it so that if you are a certain number of points back of the leader, you are eliminated.

Continue to shrink that window up until the final race, and then you don’t just end up with four drivers, but instead all of the drivers who would still be able to win the title.

When paired with my rule change that gives more points for a win, seven drivers would have a chance to win the Championship this season.

While I think the current one-race Championship isn’t going to be entirely representative of who the best driver of the year was, I understand why NASCAR likes the excitement it creates, so I will let that part stay.

I think this system is the best of both worlds.

It prevents a scenario that is possible in Formula 1, where the title can be wrapped up well before the last race.

However, it does still lead to the unpredictable and high-stakes final race that NASCAR loves, while preventing a situation where the best driver all year can miss out on a chance to even race for the title.

Edison Pellumbi is a first-year student studying broadcast journalism. To contact him, email him at ejp5889@psu.edu.