NASCAR’s playoff format really isn’t that complicated

Despite the expected annual complaints from fans, the mechanics of NASCAR’s playoff format really don’t make it all that complicated.

It’s playoff time for the NASCAR Cup Series, following a challenging regular season that, through great work by the sport’s management, ended on time despite an unexpected 10-week hiatus caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Playoffs for the Xfinity Series and Truck Series are scheduled to follow in the coming weeks.

Since the playoffs were introduced in 2004, there have been annual complaints from fans about “real championships” and whatnot, and those complaints, which anyone who knows anything about NASCAR knows to expect at this point, became even more heated in 2014 when the current format was introduced.

In each of the last seven seasons, the current format has been argued against for many reasons, including its supposed lack of straightforwardness. Sports Business Journal’s Adam Stern recently announced that NASCAR is working on a video series with five celebrities, one of whom is actor Mario Lopez, to educate new fans on the playoff format.

While it is great that NASCAR is willing to put this together to explain this format for fans who previously didn’t follow the sport, they are doing themselves no favors by (a) making things look a lot more complicated than they are by creating an entire video series about the format and (b) dumbing things down a lot more than they need to be, potentially insulting the intelligence of fans both new and old.

The playoff format is actually quite simple.

There are three three-race rounds leading up to the Championship 4: the round of 16, the round of 12 and the round of 8.

A total of 16 driver start the playoffs, and four get eliminated after each round, as the round names indicate. Much like regular season winners automatically advance to the playoffs, drivers automatically advance to the next round by winning a race in the current round, meaning there are three auto-bids available in each round.

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Non-winners from the current round fill in the remaining positions in the next round based on their point totals.

Points reset each round and drivers start each round with the same number of base points, plus the playoff points they have accrued due to their wins, stage wins and regular season points finishes.

For example, Kevin Harvick starts the round of 16 with 2,057 points due to his 57 playoff points while Kyle Busch starts it with 2,003 points, as he only accrued three playoff points. Drivers continue to accrue playoff points in the playoffs (five for winning races, one for winning stages).

In terms of actual points awarded for each race and stage, these don’t change from the regular season.

The only round when none of this is relevant to the championship is the Championship 4, when the final four drivers simply battle for the title and the highest finisher is crowned champion.

The mechanics are the same for the Xfinity Series and the Truck Series, but with 12 drivers for the former over the course of three rounds (round of 12, round of 8, Championship 4) and 10 drivers for the latter, also over the course of three rounds (round of 10, round of 8, Championship 4).

Tune in to NBC Sports Network this evening at 6:00 p.m. ET for the live broadcast of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series playoff opener, the Cook Out Southern 500, from Darlington Raceway.