The NASCAR playoffs, and the championship format as a whole, have been heated points of discussion ever since the conclusion of the 2024 season.
In January, NASCAR formed a playoff committee consisting of current drivers, former drivers and industry personnel, with the goal of evaluating the current playoff format to see if any changes are necessary for 2026.
The discussion was reignited on Tuesday (July 22) when Larry McReynolds and Danielle Trotta remarked on SiriusXM that a driver on the committee that hasn’t won a Cup Series championship (likely referring to either Mark Martin or Denny Hamlin) has been “screaming” to go back to a full-season points format — an argument that both Trotta and McReynolds disagreed with.
McReynolds denied that he was referring to Martin in his comments, while Trotta tagged Martin in a reply that expressed her disagreement.
Needless to say, Martin has remained adamant in his position that NASCAR doesn’t need a playoff format.
Is Martin correct? Have the various playoff formats used for more than two decades run their course?
Or is a playoff system a necessity for present-day NASCAR?
Two Frontstretch regulars offer their takes.
No Playoffs Necessary
Somebody had to say something, and Mark Martin’s been saying it for years before what happened on Tuesday.
Thanks to criticism provided by Trotta and McReynolds this weekend, the can of worms of the NASCAR playoffs being a terrible way to crown a champion has officially been reopened.
Despite McReynolds backing off Martin, saying that he wasn’t talking about him, Trotta still responded to him when a good portion of NASCAR’s Twitter fanbase took to the medium to give their take on the situation.
However, whether it’s Martin, Hamlin or whomever Trotta was mentioning, the NASCAR playoffs has undeniably been a system that continually reward drivers who can deliver at the end of the season rather than reward the driver who was the best across the entire season.
Just ask Joey Logano, who only made the playoff field because of a five-overtime victory at Nashville Superspeedway and only advanced to the Round of 8 thanks to a disqualification of Alex Bowman.
The disqualification allowed him to advance to the Championship 4 and steal the 2024 title with an average finish of 17.1: the worst average finish of a champion in Cup Series history. Quite a championship resume, there.
That’s simply not how this sport should go about crowning their champion.
This format hasn’t rewarded the most consistent driver at all in the three years of the Next Gen era, and it has constantly been under scrutiny for the use of win-and-you’re-in to determine advancement in the regular season and the playoff rounds.
The one-race championship finale has also been the cherry on top of this flawed system since its inception in 2014.
A segment of the fanbase has voiced their displeasure through polls of over 30,000 responses via Jeff Gluck’s Twitter and over 20,000 via Martin’s Twitter stating that this playoff system isn’t what they want. In fact, the majority of fans in these polls wanted the 36-race format to return.
This isn’t a problem for racing series like Formula 1 or IndyCar that continue to use a traditional points system to determine a championship.
So why doesn’t NASCAR and its establishment just listen to the fanbase here? It’s mostly because television flaunts the money to put on this entertainment at the end of the year to spice the season up.
However, many fans just tune out or just simply don’t care who wins the championship since the winner ends up being some out-of-nowhere driver in the end more often than the true most dominant driver of the year.
NASCAR’s history continues to get tarnished because of this playoff format, but those associated with the business continue to put fan interest for the championship to the wayside when we get closer and closer to another miserable November, and there seems to be no sight of an end to that if they continue to stay the course.
So, the way forward should 100% be to look to what worked in the past, whether it’s the 36-race format or the old 10-race “Chase for the Cup” format. What NASCAR has had for the last 11 years is a joke of a championship.
Fans want the sport to thrive and champions to be properly celebrated, but it’s nearly impossible to do when all you need to do is win one race in the regular season, get hot in at least one race in three rounds, and be good at Phoenix Raceway to poach a title.
We should all listen to Martin — or whoever was being criticized by the pair of Trotta and McReynolds. – Wyatt Watson
The Full-Season Era Is Viewed with Rose-Colored Glasses
Let’s clear the air, shall we? Mark Martin is one of, if not the, greatest driver of all time to never win a championship.
His opinion carries some weight, as it should.
However, he’s wrong on this one.
The old points system was the most broken piece of the sport on its way out. The cars were good, the driver talent was prevalent and the sport should have been running smoothly on all fronts, but it wasn’t.
I distinctly remember a young Tanner, talking to his dad, who had brought me up in the racing community and world alike, saying that it’s kind of dumb that no one cares who actually wins the races.
It was true then, and it would be true now.
As much as we like to romanticize the good ol’ days (which are scarily becoming the early 2000s, oddly enough), we often forget the problems that were prevalent in those times, too.
The human brain often looks back at the good in things and tends to forget the bad with time. It’s natural, and that’s why nobody should be offended that some think the old points system should make a comeback, even if they’re not quite correct in thinking so.
The Latford Points System led to some of the greatest championship finishes of all time, sure (see 1992). But a large part of why we look back on those championships so fondly is because it was one of the few years in which the championship race was actually a close one, and it was only so because quite literally everything fell into place exactly when it needed to for the late, great Alan Kulwicki.
More times than not, the champion had been decided weeks ago and the final few races of the season were a mere formality for most drivers and fans.
To draw a parallel, just look at the past few F1 seasons. Sure, things are intriguing now with McLaren finding its speed and its two young drivers coming into their own, but just a few short years ago, it was the Max Verstappen show week in and week out, and it was borderline unwatchable.
That was the reality of the Winston points era more times than not, and there’s no reason to go back to it. Each system has its flaws, and plainly put, the current system has less than the old one.
All of that can be true, though, and still delivered without any actual malice.
Since the NASCAR community made sure to call out McReynolds and Trotta for referencing a driver who’s apparently been very vocal about returning to the old points system earlier this week, tensions around the issue have risen to what is seemingly an all-time high.
Initially, fans thought McReynolds was referencing Martin, but he took to social media to correct that narrative. Trotta, however, doubled down, even if they weren’t referencing Martin.
Whoever was referencing who doesn’t exactly matter, though.
What does matter is getting our heads out of the space that the good ol’ days are 1) coming back and 2) were all that they were cracked up to be. Every era of NASCAR has and will always have its problems, and the power of the current media landscape lends itself to creating an echo chamber of wishing for times that have long since passed to come back around. It’s like someone let a funeral home loose on Twitter, and everyone is mad about something that is never going to happen.
That reminds me: I never told you what my dad said in response to my question, did I?
“That’s alright, son. They’ll change it in a few years, people will forget it, then get mad about it again later. You can never please everybody.”
He’s a pretty wise fella, that dad of mine. -Tanner Marlar
Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated’s OnSI Network, a contributor for TopSpeed.com, an AP Wire reporter, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host and master's student at Mississippi State University. Soon, Tanner will be pursuing a PhD. in Mass Media Studies. Tanner began working with Frontstretch as an Xfinity Series columnist in 2022.
Wyatt Watson has followed motorsports closely since 2007. He joined Frontstretch as a journalist in February 2023 after serving in the United States Navy for five years as an Electronic Technician Navigation working on submarines. Wyatt is one of Frontstretch's primary IndyCar correspondents, providing exclusive video content on site. He hosts Frontstretch's Through the Gears podcast and occasionally The Pit Straight.You can find Wyatt's written work in columns such as Friday Faceoff and 2-Headed Monsteras well as exclusive IndyCar features. Wyatt also contributes to Frontstretch's social media team, posting unique and engaging content for Frontstretch.
Wyatt Watson can be found on X @WyattWRacing