NASCAR Playoffs Are for Entertainment Purposes Only

When Joey Logano emerged from his car, having secured a third NASCAR Cup Series championship, the first words he spoke to the crowd were “I love the playoffs.”

The hailstorm of boos that he received as a response says it all.

After 11 seasons, the elimination-style playoffs have clearly not done much to win over fans. Many in the sport have rightfully criticized the postseason rules for how often they alter the points standings, effectively manipulating the championship battle every few weeks. Those criticisms were magnified after a chaotic ending to the Round of 8 at Martinsville Speedway.

Following Sunday’s (Nov. 10) Cup Series season finale at Phoenix Raceway, the criticism will not quiet down anytime soon. The title came down to a restart with 54 laps to go where Logano shot to the lead, leaving teammate Ryan Blaney bottled up in traffic. Blaney was Logano’s biggest threat to take the championship, and as the laps ticked away the No. 12 began to reel in the No. 22. During the last 10 laps, Blaney erased most of Logano’s lead and got to his teammate’s back bumper, but ran out of time to make the pass.

The result is that Logano walks away with the trophy and one of the weakest championships in the history of NASCAR. The No. 22 team’s four wins are impressive, but things look more questionable the deeper you dig into the stat line. For the entire season, Logano posted seven top fives, 13 top 10s, and an average finish of 17.1.

That is the worst amount of top fives, top 10s, and average finish that Logano has earned in the 12 seasons that he’s raced for Team Penske. Additionally, 10 drivers had more top fives than Logano this season. Kyle Larson (the season’s biggest winner) and Christopher Bell had the most in 2024 with 15. There were also 12 drivers with more top 10s than Logano, including Bell’s season-best 23.  And Logano’s average finish? Only 13th best in the Cup Series.

The obvious question at this point is how Logano wound up as the champion when he had such a weak stat line compared to his peers.

Unfortunately, Logano’s championship hinged on, more than anything else, quirks of the playoff system and a lot of luck. That’s not a knock on Logano or the No. 22 team, who have now won two of the last three Cup Series championships. Throw in Blaney’s 2023 title and Penske is on a three-year winning streak. Penske has clearly cracked the code for how to get results under the playoff format, a system that some fans have accused of being “random.” But the drawback of the playoffs is not randomness per se, it is the amount of manipulation over a short time and unfair emphasis on the timing of performance, instead of strength.

Remember that Logano would not have been part of the playoffs at all if not for winning at Nashville Superspeedway. That victory was a result of the No. 22 team stretching its fuel through five overtime attempts, a sequence of events that began when Austin Cindric spun with two laps to go. If that spin does not happen, then Logano does not get the extra laps he needed to win the race and he does not qualify for the playoffs.

Some fans might point out that Logano would have won at Richmond Raceway had he not gotten wrecked by Austin Dillon on the last lap, but that circumstance was only set up by another late caution and an overtime restart. NASCAR’s steps to ensure that races end in green flag finishes are commendable, but the sanctioning body should be embarrassed about how influential late-race chaos is becoming in the sport.

In the 10-race postseason, Logano won three times. He also finished 28th or worse three times, but two of those results did not matter because the No. 22 team won a race earlier in the same round. It seemed that Logano was out of the game completely after the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL when a late-race charge by Tyler Reddick eliminated the No. 22 by a handful of points. However, during the post-race inspection, Alex Bowman’s car was discovered to be too light.

Bowman was disqualified and forfeited all his points for the event, putting Logano back into championship contention. Then, much like in 2022, Logano won the first Round of 8 race and got extra time to prepare for Phoenix, where he and Blaney were clearly the class of the field.

Logano’s run to the championship exposes serious flaws in the playoffs. He and his team were eliminated at the ROVAL. Based on what happened on the track, he did not earn enough points and should have been out of the postseason. Even with clutch performances at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Phoenix, Logano’s championship depended on NASCAR giving him a spot in the Round of 8, and that is completely unacceptable. The 2024 Cup Series championship will always have an asterisk next to it because of the rules of the format.

How can anyone take this championship seriously when the driver who won it all got bailed out on a technicality? Logano did not deserve to advance, and Bowman did not deserve to have his season ended over something that did not definitively help his performance. That is not to say that Bowman should not have received a penalty, but the sanctioning body has no business picking and choosing who advances through the playoffs and who does not. It was wrong when NASCAR altered the lineup of the 2013 Chase, and it is wrong now. Even when penalties are due to the competitors, adding and removing drivers from title contention over things beyond their control destroys the integrity of the championship system.  

Unfortunately, as far as the playoffs are concerned, NASCAR’s leaders are willing to go down with the ship. The sanctioning body will no doubt dismiss the concerns of the fans, and even some of the competitors, but the playoffs should be called out for the joke that they are. It is one thing if the postseason does not produce a champion who has a dominant stat line. That has been going on for years.

It is also not unheard of for points penalties to have a major impact on the champion, even under a season-long format. Ask Mark Martin and Jack Roush about 1990. But a lot of stakeholders in the industry are going to be unsatisfied with how the 2024 postseason unfolded. NASCAR should frankly be embarrassed by how this championship was decided. And yet, any rule changes to the playoffs for 2025 are unlikely.

Certainly, the playoffs will have their defenders, and they will fall back on the same tired excuses. They will talk about how the playoffs push drivers to constantly fight for wins, but I cannot recall a time in NASCAR history when drivers did not already do that. Some might say that the playoffs give fans extra incentive to watch the last races of the year during football season. Isn’t the fact that a race is happening enough incentive to watch anyway? Defenders of the playoffs will also argue that all the drivers know the rules in advance which makes the system fair for everyone. I suppose, before the start of next season, NASCAR could announce that whoever leads lap 168 of next year’s race at Dover Motor Speedway gets an automatic bid to the championship round. Just because everyone knows about the rules does not mean that the rules themselves are good or fair.

Ultimately, it always comes back to entertainment. NASCAR’s leadership will insist that the playoffs are more entertaining than a season-long points format. Perhaps entertainment is in the eye of the beholder. But if NASCAR continues to sacrifice the integrity of the competition and pretend that the playoffs are about anything more meaningful than entertainment, then this sport is truly in a sad place. 

Just remember, as long as the playoffs exist, it is all for entertainment purposes only.