Did You Notice? … The NASCAR playoffs have found themselves sputtering into the Round of 8?
Six races in, television viewership has declined nearly 30% from last year alone. The conversation has drifted toward whether the sport should even have a playoff at all, an ongoing debate with the lawsuit among NASCAR, 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports continuing to simmer in the background.
Those teams can now spend the rest of the year focusing on court: neither one will have a driver inside the Round of 8. Instead, year four of a Next Gen chassis that initially brought parity inside the NASCAR garage is ending with the three top teams from each manufacturer sweeping the eight playoff spots. Heavyweights Team Penske (Ford), Hendrick Motorsports (Chevrolet) and Joe Gibbs Racing (Toyota) will slug it out to win a title they’ve shared largely amongst themselves. In 17 of the last 20 seasons, those three organizations have earned the trophy; the only other teams to win during that span no longer exist.
The reliability of their success has made the title race oh-so-predictable. But there’s another key ingredient missing in this postseason that’s left NASCAR fans apathetic this fall.
Emotion.
This time 10 years ago, under the same format, Joey Logano and Matt Kenseth were ready to kill each other. That’s not much of an exaggeration; the duo wrecked each other multiple times, with Kenseth’s retaliation at Martinsville Speedway so blatant he earned himself a two-race suspension.
Rick Allen’s call on NBC said it all: “Kenseth takes him out! Logano into the wall! The caution comes out, and the crowd roars.”
The excitement back then was over two drivers who were polar opposites and absolutely hated each other. In the same vein as the Baltimore Ravens-Pittsburgh Steelers rivalry in the NFL, New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox in baseball or Michigan-Ohio State in college football, it was the type of moment that made you pick a side.
The raw emotion from drivers has always been the lynchpin to giving this sport momentum beyond its regional roots. Dale Earnhardt versus the world in the 1980s and 1990s is the example that’s talked about the most, but there’s plenty of more recent ones. Kyle Busch versus Brad Keselowski. Ross Chastain versus … well, the world. Ditto for Carson Hocevar, who has ruffled feathers for much of his first two years at the NASCAR Cup Series level.
None of those rivalries are featured inside the Round of 8. Over the summer, I wrote about the top-five feuds that remained unresolved in the NASCAR garage. Not one of them have flared up in the playoffs or intertwined themselves with the championship fight.
Instead, the biggest scuffle we’ve seen is between a team owner, Denny Hamlin, roughing up the team he owns (Bubba Wallace) while battling for the win at Kansas Speedway. That contact knocked Wallace out of the Round of 8, leaving even that storyline on the cutting room floor (Although I’m skeptical of how much of a feud there even was when the guy you’re mad at also writes out your paycheck every two weeks).
What are we left with instead? Best friends Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott fighting it out for a spot in the Championship 4. Chase Briscoe and Hamlin setting past differences aside (remember the old Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, anyone?) as they both seek to advance as teammates.
A racing series that once prided itself on pooh-poohing multi-car team cooperation will now watch it happen all over the place. With four spots available for that final round, each of these three teams will seek to place all their drivers in the field. William Byron wins at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend? Great. Now, let’s place the effort at HMS on Kyle Larson and Elliott to ensure the organization has the field (mostly) cleared at Phoenix Raceway in a few weeks.
That system doesn’t engender itself to a rivalry. In fact, it makes building up the battle for a championship near impossible. We don’t know who the four drivers are going to be until the final race, leaving just seven days to play up possible storylines. The old battles between Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace for the title? Or Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon? Those played out over the course of an entire year. Even Hamlin’s “will he ever win a title” question mark can’t get top billing until everyone actually knows he’s qualified to win it.
That’s where we’ve ended up with a playoff system that can clinch you a spot in September as early as winning February’s Daytona 500, then leave you mired in the midst of multiple knockout rounds to advance. But it’s also not the only thing to blame.
For rivalries to brew, drivers need to actually butt heads.
Sharing notes and playing nice in team meetings makes for a good, corporate work environment. Problem is, I don’t really see a large audience paying for seats to see people walk from office cubicle to cubicle and chat about the weather.
That’s what NASCAR’s top teams have become, a big kumbaya to reach the final race as, in theory, a full organization of up to four teams could find itself competing at the championship finale. It makes rivalries even more difficult to fester, as everyone is understandably working toward this common goal.
There have been moments over the past few years where other teams and drivers have threatened to break through. Chastain in 2022. Hocevar. Shane van Gisbergen this year with what’s become a record-setting rookie performance.
But none of them are part of the field of eight left standing.
The qualifications of that octet remain outstanding: four Cup champions and six total championships among them. Briscoe is the only one of the eight who hasn’t made a Championship 4 in his career. They’ve won 22 of the 32 races this season, earned 18 pole positions and everyone but Logano has at least 10 top-five finishes.
It’s the best of the best. It’s just a group that’s likely to enjoy their time together off the track, playing golf, hitting up concerts or relaxing in the motorhome lot than spending their time figuring out how to beat each other for this trophy.
Good for them. But bad for a sport that desperately needs to give its fans something to watch.
Did You Notice? … Quick hits before taking off …
- Corey Heim has now become the first double-digit winner in NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series history. With three races left, it’s not inconceivable he could end up with 13 total wins — victories in more than half of all races run over the course of the season. He’s got to move up to Cup next year, right? A Rookie of the Year battle between him and Connor Zilisch would be one of those epic battles the sport needs.
- SVG now has more wins than any driver in Cup this year not named Denny Hamlin. But without the playoff? He’d be sitting 26th in the point standings right now, behind drivers like Erik Jones and a struggling Kyle Busch. Does that make sense? Sure doesn’t to me. There’s been so much focus on the playoffs these days, it’s easy to ignore how our current point system might not reward the actual act of winning enough.
Follow Tom Bowles on X at @NASCARBowles
The author of Did You Notice? (Wednesdays) Tom spends his time overseeing Frontstretch’s 40+ staff members as its majority owner and Editor-in-Chief. Based outside Philadelphia, Bowles is a two-time Emmy winner in NASCAR television and has worked in racing production with FOX, TNT, and ESPN while appearing on-air for SIRIUS XM Radio and FOX Sports 1's former show, the Crowd Goes Wild. He most recently consulted with SRX Racing, helping manage cutting-edge technology and graphics that appeared on their CBS broadcasts during 2021 and 2022.
You can find Tom’s writing here, at CBSSports.com and Athlonsports.com, where he’s been an editorial consultant for the annual racing magazine for 15 years.