1. Did NASCAR go too far or too light on the Martinsville Speedway penalties?
Now that all of the appeals have been dropped and/or denied, it can be stated that they were not enough to curb cheating.
When a decision is made like this, NASCAR is basically setting a precedent. Granted, it is likely going to ignore said precedent the next time this comes up. But it’s something the appeals board will be able to refer to when it makes a judgment on this again.
Then there’s the appeals board. A big reason why NASCAR went fairly light likely was because it didn’t want the board to tone down the penalties when they were heard. The board has done so on occasion in recent years or even repealed the penalty entirely.
Ultimately, a few hundred thousand dollars, points penalties and a bunch of one-race suspensions weren’t everything that could have been done here. But this dumb format put them into a self-defeating bind that they had to loop through.
2. What’s up with this championship format?
Looking back on this year, one of my favorite columns I wrote at Frontstretch was this reaction piece to Ricky Rudd getting voted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
It’s just kind of funny reading it back now and remembering that this is a man being honored by the sport in just a few months’ time. A sport that is such a dramatically different series to that in which he raced.
If Rudd were driving today, he’d probably be seen as a total bust because he only won a race or two every year. He’d be eliminated in short order in the playoffs because all of his top-five and top-10 finishes wouldn’t mean very much at all.
It feels like NASCAR spent decades hearing media, drivers and fans complaining about how wins don’t matter and good point days suck. It has now overcorrected to the point where wins matter far too much.
Now races take multiple restarts to end at times just because there is no real negative to running into the driver in front. At best, you’ll move up a place. At worst, you’ll fight them after the race. Then NASCAR will come in with its wagging finger and tell both of you to cut it out in the championship race.
3. What’s happening in the legal battle between NASCAR and the teams that didn’t sign the charter agreement?
In other news, there still hasn’t been a ruling in the preliminary junction hearing between NASCAR and 23XI Racing/Front Row Motorsports as of press time.
It should be obvious that the teams absolutely do need to win here. NASCAR has far too much power that it wields with very little consequence.
We just saw this week in the fallout of the Martinsville fiasco that Joe Gibbs could not protest the result on the grounds of it being a safety call. Even though NASCAR can pull out just about any clause in the rulebook to justify going against it, something it has done since day one.
NASCAR really does need to be taken down a peg. This lawsuit is probably the only real shot at doing just that, and not having the preliminary junction granted would deal a devastating blow to both teams. It would also almost ensure that this lawsuit will spin out over years in the court room.
And just to be clear: Regardless of the winner of the case, the loser will ultimately be the drivers. Their decision not to unionize at any point in this process because of something that happened 55 years ago will end with them having their pay further cut while the industry generates more money than ever before.
4. Why even watch the championship races?
I have decided to give this format the respect it deserves with these championship previews, or lack thereof.
It is a bad format, held at a bad racetrack. It is very clearly a format that has nothing to do with deciding who is the best driver. Some seasons the best driver happens to win anyway, such as Kyle Larson in 2021. Other seasons, it is very obviously not the case, as this year shows.
Of course! Same graph for the four drivers eliminated in the Round of 8 pic.twitter.com/OEzZDkT1oe
— Daniel Céspedes (@_DanielCespedes) November 4, 2024
There was some genuine hopium expressed at the start of this weekend that NASCAR may have finally found that tipping point. The moment that the offices at Daytona Beach finally realizes this needs to get thrown in the trash.
But it won’t. This will not sway NASCAR. That is evidenced by them penalizing Richard Childress Racing and Trackhouse Racing as they did this week.
The way you get NASCAR to sway would be to simply not watch races. Just go do something else. I haven’t watched a live NASCAR event since that NASCAR Xfinity Series Charlotte ROVAL race. Cup would be the Southern 500, because that’s a race that means so much more to win than anything else on the calendar nowadays.
And it’s been fine! If I get in the mood to watch some NASCAR, I go to NASCAR Classics and fire up the 1985 season I am slowly working through. That’s a far better use of time than the modern NASCAR circus; every one of those races feel like what the Southern 500 is today.
It needs to be stressed as well that it does not need to be like this. The NTT IndyCar Series does fine numbers with no playoffs. Formula 1 is not only doing fine with a regular-season championship, it also has a significantly younger audience than NASCAR does and is starting to attract sponsors away from potential NASCAR deals.
So stop watching if you don’t like this format. A drop in viewership for the playoffs would be the only real way to get NBC to push NASCAR to drop them. Go visit a pumpkin patch on Sunday. Take a walk through the park. Watch the NFL. Just don’t watch the NASCAR race.
Which should be won by Tyler Reddick. It’s what everybody deserves.
About the author
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.
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Drivers are independent contractors. Their salaries are based on their sponsorship and their results. We don’t need another bloated union sticking its nose into business and sucking up more of the funds. NASCAR doing it is bad enough.
The playoffs aren’t going away. They’re providing the bread and circuses to keep the masses entertained and the journalists with something to write and complain about. The best teams don’t always win, even in the previous season-long championships.
If Bell is out, Byron should be out. He had more help staying in than Bell did.
Bell is out because he himself broke the rules. Byron broke no rules
True, unless the 24 team had some incriminating evidence, such as radio chatter showing that they were part of the plan, they can just plead innocence and say it was a move solely initiated by the 1 and 3 and the 24 team had nothing to do with it. I suspect that there is a good chance Chevrolet was the driving force behind it.