A week away from the start of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, attention is already turning towards next season and how the discipline will crown its champions moving forward.
To wit, NASCAR organized a playoff committee to discuss the topic, and potentially come up with a different format moving forward. That group has included the likes of driver-owners like Brad Keselowski and Denny Hamlin, NASCAR Hall of Famers like Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr, representatives from NASCAR and its TV partners, and journalists Kelly Crandall and Jeff Gluck.
There has been lively conversation. Not part of that group is NASCAR president Steve O’Donnell, whom provided an update on what next year could look like, during a wide-ranging conversation with YouTuber Eric Estepp.
“We are kind of in the final processes,” O’Donnell said. “We’ve tried to talk to as many of the stakeholder groups as possible, we have a couple more of those conversations to have. And I think for us, the decisions are going to be do you immediately put something in the Cup Series? Do you try something around next year’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and the Truck Series? Do you try three different things? Most sports are like, ‘Let’s try this in Triple-A baseball and if it works, great. If we want to tweak it, OK, let’s make those tweaks and put it to the next level.’ We’ve historically not done that. So, we’re just going to try to beat up a lot of those things.
“I will say that if we stay status quo and don’t do anything in all three series, there’s got to be a pretty good explanation as to why and to who we spoke to. But there is some momentum to try some things, for sure. I think you’ll see that. I don’t have the final answer yet, but I can assure the fans there’s been a lot of really good debate, a lot of things to think through.”
The status quo is polarizing for several reasons.
It places an emphasis on winning races at the expense of season long consistency. Sure, there is a reward for such consistency in terms of playoff points awarded to the top-10 in the final regular season points but a single win routinely places a driver outside of the top-25 in points at the expense of one in the top-15.
Then there’s Shane Van Gisbergen, who has won four races at Mexico City, Chicago, Sonoma and Watkins Glen — all road courses — but is still outside of the top-25 in points due to his season long consistency.
‘SVG’ will finish no worse than 16th now, as will Austin Dillon, who won Richmon on Saturday from 28th in points.
That rubs some fans the wrong way and Joey Logano went onto win the championship last year despite a season that was arguably just 15th in terms of season long consistency, when not factoring in four wins, five if counting the non-points All-Star Race, and O’Donnell referenced considering all of that in his conversation with Estepp.
“Even last year, Kyle Larson rolling off all the wins he did and [fans saying] if he’s not in the final four, it’s ridiculous and not a good reflection of it and therefore, you should put more emphasis on the number of wins. Okay, fast forward to this year — we’re having discussions about should wins mean a lot more in terms of points,” O’Donnell said. “You take SVG, who I think is a great guy and has great skill, but polarizing, like, woah, should he be treated the same as Kyle Larson, right?
“So, you’ve got to balance a lot of different dynamics of where drivers are winning, what tracks, and take everyone’s name out of it and say, ‘This is the format.’ Ultimately, I can assure you what we want is for the championship and the champion to be someone that all our fans are proud of in terms of how it was determined.”
Most within the industry expect the format to stay the same for 2026 with any changes coming a year after that.
