The 2024 NASCAR season is now over. Joey Logano is the Cup Series champion. This is the third title in a row for Team Penske. Once again, Ford has managed to pull off a title run despite having under-performed throughout the regular season. Also, once again, the validity of the NASCAR playoff system has come into question. The championship race itself was a bit of a snooze-fest. Both old and new fans alike are wondering if anything can be done to make NASCAR great again.
Personally, I am going to be a little biased on this topic. The 2024 season was the first without my all time favorite driver, Kevin Harvick. Furthermore, my favorite team, Stewart-Haas Racing is now kaput. Given NASCAR’s current trajectory, I’m very tempted to just say that there is no way to make NASCAR great again. It feels like the regular season doesn’t matter at all. Ultimately, the playoff system feels like it leaves an awful lot to be decided by luck.
Honestly, I chose not to attend a NASCAR event this season. Instead, I chose to attend the CARS Tour race at North Wilkesboro Speedway. This decision was made for multiple reasons. Ultimately, I am just not a big fan of NASCAR’s current product. It is unclear how we got here, but many fans, including myself, have ideas about how to make NASCAR great again.
Eliminate Playoff Controversy
Controversy isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Often, a little controversy can add to an otherwise dull racing product. Still, the controversy at Martinsville really led to a lot of fans questioning the validity (and legitimacy) of the championship race prior to it even taking place. The situation with Christopher Bell’s “safety violation” in the Martinsville elimination race was very problematic.
If NASCAR is going to utilize an elimination style format for the playoffs, then decisions which affect who is eliminated should be as black and white as possible. This is a situation in which NASCAR should not over-think the optics of a penalty. When NASCAR is over-thinking the optics, they are looking suspicious. The Christopher Bell penalty looks suspicious to more than just Christopher Bell and his fans.
While I do not want to look at the Christopher Bell penalty in much depth, the fact that both Chevy and Toyota were partaking in race manipulation in an attempt to help their fellow respective OEM drivers is problematic. NASCAR chose to focus on Bell’s “safety violation” and handle the race manipulation separately. In my opinion, those who were set to benefit from said manipulation should have been disqualified for it. This means that both Bell and Byron should have been disqualified, and Kyle Larson should have been put in the final four. This would have left Bell without much of an argument to make about being robbed.
Are we living in the @joeylogano era? pic.twitter.com/JFSfHDos6I
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) November 12, 2024
More than One Race should Determine the Champion
Joey Logano has now won three out of the last seven cup series championships. Does this accomplishment rank up there with Tony Stewart’s three championships? What about Jeff Gordon’s four titles? Personally, I don’t feel like Logano’s championships rank up there. They are less impressive championships in my opinion, and this is due to the playoff format. It is specifically the one race championship that is especially problematic for me.
Many who follow NASCAR have suggested the championship round to include multiple races. I would offer up a compromise. NASCAR should make the championship round into a doubleheader, with each race awarding a full race’s worth of points, including stages. The field could even be inverted after the first race to set the starting lineup. This way you ultimately end up with a champion after one event, but you held two races.
Personally, I would love for them to just go back to the old Winston Cup points system. Yet, we all know that isn’t going to happen. I don’t think it would be fair to call this “era,” the Joey Logano era. Yes, he has mastered the sneaky path of theft to the Championship winning three out of the last seven titles. It does fit his driving style (and his personality type, come to think of it): passive-aggressive (using dirty air to hold off faster cars etc). Still, if you look at overall stats, this is nowhere near the “Joey Logano” era.
The Regular Season Should Matter More (also MORE HORSEPOWER)
Two things that I do not think will be addressed by NASCAR are two of the most important things. Obviously, the regular season needs to matter more. As it is currently, it’s basically 26 chances to win a race to get an automatic playoff berth. One of the unique things about NASCAR was always the length of the season. Of course, executives didn’t want to see another 2003 happen, so they got rid of the old points system. They did this because they didn’t want people to not watch the last few races of the season, which was a good probability if they let another Matt Kenseth run away with the points title multiple races before the end of the season.
Yet, NASCAR has now gone to the extreme in the other direction. The first 26 races don’t mean enough. The regular season points champion should be added to the championship round if they don’t end up qualifying for the final round. It could be called the regular season champion’s provisional. Then we’d get to see 5 different teams fighting for the championship. (Maybe even do the same thing for the driver who earned the most regular season wins.)
Finally, NASCAR is never going to be great again with this next gen car, unless they up the horsepower. With the low horsepower and high downforce, it really doesn’t take nearly as much skill as the days of high horsepower and lower downforce. The best you’re going to get with these cars with this amount of horsepower is mediocre and lucky, not great.
