NASCAR's Playoff Format Rewards Winning Less Than Previous Formats

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by Julian Spivey
In 2003 Matt Kenseth won the NASCAR Cup series championship despite only winning one race during the season, marking the fewest number of wins ever in a season by a champion in the series’ history. At that time in the sport the driver who accrued the most points during the system won the championship. Kenseth had enough points that he clinched the championship in the season’s penultimate race. Ryan Newman led the series with eight wins that season but was only consistent enough overall to finish six in the point standings.
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The combination of those things led NASCAR to completely overhaul its championship format – something the sport has done multiple times in the years since.

The sport wanted to place an emphasis on winning so it put forth a playoff format in 2004 that would reset the points among the top 10 drivers (a number that would be tinkered with) in the point standings after the first 26 races of the season. The driver who accrued the most points over the final 10 races would win the championship. This format would be dominated by Jimmie Johnson who would win a record five consecutive championships and then later a sixth in the 10 years of this format.

But with the sport seeing a drop in television ratings and fan attendance in events they rehauled the system once again before the 2014 season deciding to eliminate drivers after three race intervals during the playoffs and going to a final championship event that is essentially a winner-take-all format. It’s the Super Bowl event NASCAR had always wanted and in their minds placed a high emphasis on winning. A playoff driver could win one race in a three-race segment and make the cut for the next segment, even if they somehow happened to finish dead last in the other two events. Also, in a crazy hypothetical that likely will never happen, but the thought of it happening is hilarious, a driver could win the first nine playoff races and finish second overall in the final race of the season and lose the championship.
On Sunday at Martinsville Speedway in the penultimate race of the year, the race that decides the Championship 4 for Phoenix Raceway this upcoming weekend the driver that has obviously been the most dominate within the sport all calendar year long Kevin Harvick was eliminated from championship contention.

Harvick received a flat tire early in the race, going down two-laps on a track that is painfully unforgiving to anybody needing to make a green flag pit stop, and though he eventually finished on the lead lap it put him too far behind to contend with other drivers like Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski in the standings.

Harvick won nine race this year and could win a 10th (a rare feat in the series) this weekend, and the best he can finish in the point standings is fifth.

Does this format truly reward winning? Has any NASCAR format truly rewarded it?
This is the seventh season under the Championship 4 format in NASCAR’s Cup Series and with the winningest driver of the year out of contention already (the third time the winningest driver of the year has failed to even make the Championship) it’ll ensure the winningest driver in the sport has only won the championship in two years under this format (Jimmie Johnson in 2016 and Martin Truex Jr. in 2017). So, in this format (though seven seasons could still be considered a small sample) the winningest driver has only won the title 29 percent of the time.
In the 10 seasons before under a playoff format that reset the points after 26 races and then the driver who accumulated the most points in a 10-race playoff the winningest driver of the season won the title 40 percent of the time.

In the final 10 seasons under the points-only championship format (1994-2003) the winningest driver also won the championship 40 percent of the time (interestingly that driver was Jeff Gordon every single time).

So, one could argue NASCAR has never truly put an emphasis on winning. But it certainly is interesting that its playoff format that is supposed to do so has resulted in the winningest driver of the season winning the title less often than in the 20 seasons prior to it.

The more and more NASCAR has tinkered with its system the less and less meaning winning a championship in the sport seems to have.

If a driver accumulates more points than another throughout a season in a full-season slate or even a 10-race playoff slate wouldn’t that mean they are more worthy of a title than someone who is probably the fifth or so best driver of the season, but managed to finish higher than others in a winner-take-all format?

Yes, there are those who say “well, this is how it’s done in sports like football with the Super Bowl.” Yes, it is. It’s a fair point. The best regular season team does fail to win the championship in the NFL too. But every other major racing series in the world awards a champion based on season-long point standings and that’s why nobody ever claims a Formula 1 or IndyCar champion to be undeserving. It just feels racing is supposed to be points based. I’ve disliked every NASCAR playoff format since 2004 for that very reason and the one the sport currently has may be the most entertaining, but it’s the least fair and deserving. That matters to me. NASCAR wants to be entertaining. I want it to be a sport.

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