Changes to the 2025 NASCAR Season

  After the end of the 2024 Season, the talk of the town was the Playoffs and how they needed a massive overhaul during the offseason. Unfortunately, no changes were made to the Playoffs to make them feel more legitimate and tolerable. Despite that, NASCAR made a few notable changes for 2025 and we will discuss them in this article.

  First off, a few weeks ago, NASCAR removed rookie strips for anyone who is a rookie in Cup, Xfinity, and Truck. Why this was a needed change is unclear, but anyone who is a casual fan will need to keep a good eye on who is a rookie and who is a veteran. One big change to the NASCAR Schedule is the Cup and Xfinity Series will have its first international points race in modern history. The place they will be racing is Mexico City, Mexico. This is a big deal for NASCAR because they’re breaking free from their comfort zone even more to attract new fans out of the United States. NASCAR has already gained some new fans by doing the street course in downtown Chicago, but with them going international, the NASCAR empire can continue to grow this year. None of these changes can compare to easily the biggest change to the schedule and season: the new NASCAR In-Season Tournament.

  Anybody who watches the NBA knows about the In-Season Tournament added to the sport in 2023. For anyone who does not know what an In-season Tournament is, it is a multi-stage tournament with a certain number of teams for multiple groups. Each team in a group would play one game against each other and the winner of each group would advance to the Knockout stage. This stage is a single-elimination tournament, where the loser of each game played would be eliminated. The tournament championship would be settled between the top two teams with the best group stage records and the team with the best group-play games record. That is how the In-Season Tournament works in the NBA, and in NASCAR, it is structured similarly.

  Starting this year, the In-Season Tournament begins at the Atlanta Superspeedway in June. NASCAR will have 3 seeding races to determine the 32 drivers that will qualify for the tournament. The three things that will determine which 32 drivers make it into the tournament are their best finish in those three races with tiebreakers determined by the next best finish and their position in full-season points after the three races. Once the tournament begins, it plays out much like the NBA In-Season Tournament. For the first race, two groups of 16 drivers will be put into 8 brackets each. The highest finisher of each two-driver bracket advances to the next race in the tournament. The field gets cut in half to two groups of eight drivers in 4 brackets. The highest finish of each bracket advances to the third race of the tournament and the field gets cut down to two groups of four drivers in two brackets. The same rules apply for races three and four and in the final race, the tournament comes down to the two drivers that finished better in the first 4 races than everyone else in their group. Whichever of the two finishes higher than the other in race five gets a prize of $1 Million. This whole idea may seem gimmicky to some, but I think this is a good move to make the summer months more exciting to watch than they usually are. Instead of solely focusing on what drivers are racing for the win, people can also focus on who is winning the battle against their respective rivals to advance and win the tournament. People will now have a good reason to watch any of those five races and be invested in what is taking place on track.

Technical Advisor – Scott Korowotny