CHARLOTTE, N.C. – It seems everyone except champion Joey Logano is eager to see to a change to the NASCAR playoff format.
How to fix it remains up for debate.
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Logano won his third Cup Series championship earlier this month, re-igniting the conversation about whether the current playoff format is the best way to determine a worthy champion. Logano wound up winning four races this season, but only had 13 top 10 finishes in 37 races and clearly didn’t have one of the best cars over the course of the season.
Logano, it seemed, did just enough to get by.
He got his share of breaks, too, using what amounted to a Hail Mary win in Nashville — stretching his empty fuel tank through five overtimes — to qualify for the postseason. He was actually eliminated from playoff contention in the second round, only to be reinstated after a competitor’s car was ruled to be illegal.
Logano's run to the title has left some drivers wanting to see the system altered, with suggestions ranging from minor tweaks to major changes.
“I think the message we are trying to send is: Make the regular season matter more,” said Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 car for Joe Gibbs Racing and a co-owner of the 23XI Racing team. He suggested increasing the bonus points a driver gets during the regular season.
“The (Christopher) Bells, (Kyle) Larsons, they deserve to have a really good buffer there to make it through the (playoff) rounds,” Hamlin said. “We're in a sport where you can get caught up in so many wrecks and different things that can happen. ... There are 26 (regular season) races and they are proving to be not that substantial to winning a championship and that's not something you want.”
Hamlin suggested that over the past three years the Team Penske champions — Logano twice and Ryan Blaney once — “didn't have to do much” during the regular season.
“And that's probably not good,” Hamlin added.
NASCAR likes the current playoff system because of the emphasis it places on each race heading down the final stretch of the season in its never-ending quest for Game 7 moments. Stock car racing's governing body remains open to tweaking the format — it if it improves the sport.
“I love that aspect of it," Bell said of the emphasis on the playoff races, “but maybe adjusting the points systems to make sure we get the right cars into the championship event would be awesome.”
Blaney said it's up to drivers to adapt the rules in place. But he said in his “ideal world” he'd like to see the top 16 drivers on points in the regular season qualify for the playoffs. He said race winners should get 10 or 15 points instead of five, and that the regular-season champion should get an additional 30 points.
Blaney's final suggestion involves less elimination races.
He suggested the 16-car field should be cut to eight after five playoff races, with the remaining eight drivers competing over the final five races for the championship.
“I would like to see a group of races to end the year where you are not going to have anyone run away with it and you're going to have three to five races and you're still going to have some really good competition going on,” Blaney said.
Logano just shakes his head and offers a sarcastic smile at all the tweak talk.
He was emphatic about the system not needing to be changed after his clinching win at Phoenix and didn't stray from that conviction at Friday's annual awards ceremony in Charlotte.
When asked if there are any changes that need to be made, Logano replied, “Nothing, personally. I wouldn't change a thing,” adding that he thinks the format is “super entertaining.”
Of course, if you've won three championships since 2018, why would you want to change?
“I think we all need to understand why we changed it in the first place, it's because the fans said they didn't like the way it was, so we changed it,” Logano said. “And then everybody loved it. And it was great. And now, oh, we're going to complain about it again? C'mon, guys. Geez.”
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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing