Okay everyone. First, let’s all take a deep breath. Now, pull up a comfy chair, crack open your favorite beverage and let’s talk about the end of Sunday’s (Nov. 3) race at Martinsville Speedway.
At least there is no doubt about Ryan Blaney’s victory. Blaney drove to the lead with 15 laps to go and secured his passage to the Championship 4 for the second year in a row, joining Joey Logano and Tyler Reddick.
The fourth and final spot in the championship race took much longer to decide. With Blaney cruising to victory, William Byron was poised to be the only driver who would advance on points. He had a small cushion over Christopher Bell, who was the first driver one lap down and could not pick up any additional positions.
However, Byron was sliding back through the field on old tires and his small points advantage over Bell was starting to shrink.
That brings us to the final laps of the race when a couple of curious things happened. First, Austin Dillon and Ross Chastain caught Byron and rode behind him double-wide for several laps. Had either driver passed the No. 24, Byron and Bell would have been tied on points with Bell taking the tiebreaker. This meant that there would have been no Chevrolets in the final round of the playoffs. Byron, Chastain, and Dillon all drive Chevrolets.
Curious.
With Dillon and Chastain sitting behind Byron, it looked like Bell was out of time and out of options. But on the last lap, Bubba Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota slowed dramatically down the backstretch. Bell, also in a Toyota, passed Wallace and drove deep into turn 3, bumping into the outside wall. Once there, Bell hit the gas in turn 4 and raced back to the finish line. Having stayed ahead of the No. 23, Bell and Byron ended the race tied on points.
But the Championship 4 still was not settled. Bell’s last-lap move was similar to Chastain’s Hail Melon maneuver from two years ago, a wall-riding move that NASCAR has since disallowed for safety concerns. Furthermore, radio communications from the Nos. 1, 3 and 23 teams revealed that everyone was well aware of how close the points situation was between Bell and Byron. It was an absolute mess of a finish and for more than 20 minutes after the checkered flag fell, nobody knew who the Championship 4 drivers would be.
The final call from NASCAR was that Bell violated the rule against riding the wall. The actual penalty was to not count Bell’s final lap, dropping him to 22nd in the final finishing order and giving the last transfer spot to Byron. Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin were eliminated from the playoffs along with Bell.
So here we are, in the final week of the NASCAR season, and all the chatter is about the controversy at Martinsville. Some fans are mad at the Chevy drivers for apparently colluding to help Byron. Other fans are upset that Bell was penalized for his last-lap move. While those feelings are all understandable, neither Byron, Bell, Hendrick Motorsports nor Joe Gibbs Racing are the ones really at fault for this mess. The fault lies entirely with NASCAR and the awful playoff format that the leaders of this sport continue to support, despite its complete failure.
Sunday’s race is a perfect example of why adding multiple points resets and formal eliminations into the postseason is a terrible idea. In the original 10-race Chase, drivers fell out of title contention naturally throughout the postseason. There were no pre-determined races that would cut the playoff field and bring an immediate end to several drivers’ title hopes. Now, with the elimination-style playoffs, every competitor knows exactly when drivers will be eliminated and the points will be reset. The certainty of elimination invites situations like what we saw on Sunday. Teams will naturally make plans among themselves, and their manufacturer allies, to stay in the game. As long as the playoffs exist in this format, NASCAR cannot legislate race manipulation out of existence.
Furthermore, this is the second time this postseason when one driver was eliminated, and another driver was put back into the playoffs, due to a NASCAR ruling and not on-track competition. The first instance was Alex Bowman’s disqualification at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, which put Logano back into the playoffs after he was seemingly knocked out. Yes, Bowman and the No. 48 team broke an established rule, but the idea that NASCAR can put eliminated drivers back into the playoffs makes the system look like a joke.
NASCAR’s post-race ruling after Martinsville is even worse. The reason that Byron will compete for a title this week and Bell will not came down to the technical definition of what constitutes riding the wall. It was a judgment call that realistically could have gone either way. Although Bell accelerated while leaning against the wall in turn 4, he definitively did not drive into turn 3 the same way Chastain did two years ago. Bell’s explanation that he drove into the corner too deep and got loose is plausible and, the way the race ended, he should have advanced. Instead, Bell is eliminated from winning the championship due to a judgment call that NASCAR made, which only existed because of circumstances that the sanctioning body itself created.
NASCAR will have a big mess on its hands if Byron or Logano wins the title. Byron is only championship eligible due to NASCAR’s ruling against Bell and the double-wide block from Chastain and Dillon (a maneuver that the sanctioning body is admittedly still investigating.) Logano was only in the Round of 8 to begin with due to Bowman’s disqualification.
While the No. 22 team won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway the next week, it should be noted that Blaney pushed Logano during the closing laps to help him save fuel and preserve his lead. Pushing is not against the rules, but it gave Logano a significant advantage and could be considered by some to be race manipulation. Either Byron or Logano winning the championship at this point would be fundamentally wrong.
Resetting points during the playoffs has always been a bad call. Each time the points reset, the standings become a less accurate picture of how each driver has performed relative to the competition over the season. Championships should be about rewarding each year’s best driver, but the playoffs do not fulfill this obligation.
They do not reward consistently strong performances if wins allow you to advance through each round, regardless of other finishes. But the playoffs do not reward winning either. Larson is a six-time winner in 2024, and nobody else has more than three wins. Larson was eliminated at Martinsville.
The problem is that, along with the issues described above, NASCAR does not have the capability to officiate the playoffs fairly. It is certainly not a new problem; controversies of race manipulation have haunted the elimination-style playoffs since their inception. But Sunday’s race encapsulated NASCAR’s incompetency more than any other race has in several years. It was clear that the sanctioning body had no idea what to do in the immediate aftermath of the race.
The decision to penalize Bell for wall riding, even when his move was not a definitive wall ride, raises a lot of questions. It also remains to be seen how NASCAR responds to the radio communications of Dillon’s, Chastain’s, and Wallace’s teams. It all made for a frustrating ending to what was likely the best Martinsville race of the Next Gen era.
On Sunday afternoon, NASCAR will crown a NASCAR Cup Series champion at Phoenix Raceway, and it will do so under a cloud of controversy. Even if Blaney or Reddick wins the title, their triumph will be overshadowed by the embarrassment that NASCAR caused itself during the 2024 postseason. What should be a celebration for the winning team and a sendoff of a season that has featured many good races will be tainted by the effects of the postseason. Martinsville is the latest in a long line of races that proves the playoffs are rotting NASCAR from within and destroying the authenticity of the sport that so many of us love.
Okay, now I need a deep breath.
Bryan began writing for Frontstretch in 2016. He has penned Up to Speed for the past eight years. A lifelong student of auto racing, Bryan is a published author and automotive historian. He is a native of Columbus, Ohio and currently resides in Southern Kentucky.