Why The NASCAR Playoffs Are A Failure For The Sport

  The 2025 NASCAR Playoffs are officially here. The Playoffs have existed in NASCAR since 2004, and as more time passes, the more backlash they receive from fans. Fans have a good reason not to like the Playoffs, because they have only made NASCAR worse in terms of legitimacy.

  The biggest reason why Playoffs do not belong in a sport like NASCAR is that they consistently do not reward the best driver all season with the championship. Motorsports like NASCAR, IndyCar, and F1 have all competitors race against each other every single race. Sports that are run like this should have the driver and team that was the best all year be rewarded with the championship; that is the fairest way to go about things. Having a Playoff system where the field gets reset four times, with the Championship coming down to a one-race winner-take-all event, eliminates any success a driver has had in the regular season. Despite potentially having a good points cushion above the cutline, if a driver has one or two bad races in the Round of 16, 12, or 8, they can be eliminated. A few off races should not be a season-killer for someone if they have an incredible season where they establish themselves as the best driver of the year; every driver has an off-week now and then, and that is not something a driver should be punished for. The best example of someone having an incredible season that means nothing by the end of the season is Kevin Harvick in 2020. Harvick was the man to beat in 2020. He won nine races, had 20 Top 5 and 27 Top 10 finishes, led over 1500 laps, and had an average finish of 7.3. However, in the Round of 8, he had two off races that ended his season. At Texas, he was leading early in the race, but due to a heavy amount of fog that got the track moist, Harvick slipped in the rain and slammed the outside wall in Turn 2. The next week at Martinsville, Harvick had his worst race of the season by running outside of the Top 20 for most of the race due to an incident on track with driver Matt Kenseth. Harvick had his car come to life by the end, but it was too late as he would be eliminated by one point (that was going to happen if he had not tried to spin Busch out on the final lap to gain the extra point he needed to advance). A couple of bad races do not take away from such a remarkable season, but with this format, it unfortunately does. Worst of all, even if a driver makes the final four with all the Playoff Points they accumulated during the regular season and the Playoffs, all of that goes down the drain in the finale. The final four drivers start the season finale with exactly 5000 points each, which not only eliminates all the Playoff Points they earned but also makes the first 35 races of the season meaningless. Think of it this way: a driver can lead every single lap, win every single Stage, and win every race for the first 35 races of the year, and in the finale, lead every single lap but still lose the Championship if they lose the race by even 0.001 seconds. This scenario will never happen for the entirety of NASCAR, but the fact that something like that can theoretically happen is a perfect example of why the Playoffs do not work for NASCAR. Playoffs may be fun to watch for the entertainment, but they are not from a legitimate sports standpoint.

  We can only hope NASCAR will go back to a full-season points format someday.

  Technical Advisor – Scott Korowotny