NASCAR: In defense of the modern-day playoff format

By Asher Fair | Nov 3, 2020

Kevin Harvick, Stewart-Haas Racing, NASCAR (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images) /

Kevin Harvick’s unexpected elimination from the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs has again reignited the great playoff debate.

Most NASCAR Cup Series fans had Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick not only penciled into the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway but penciled in as the overwhelming favorite to win the season finale and thus his second championship as a result of the dominant season he has had, one which saw him clinch the unofficial “points” title with two races remaining.

So most fans were left shocked when his championship hopes came down to an attempt to wreck Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch on the final lap of Sunday’s round of 8 finale at Martinsville Speedway.

That attempt ultimately failed, leaving Harvick with his first round of 8 elimination since 2016 — yet another season that saw him win the unofficial “points” title but not the official championship.

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As a result, one of the best seasons of the 21st century will net a result of no better than fifth place in the championship standings, a topic which has reignited the ageless playoff debate.

Should Harvick really have been denied the chance to compete for a championship after the season he had, simply because of two subpar performances?

Sure, we can spend all day talking about the 2007 New England Patriots or the 2015 Kentucky Wildcats. While the argument can be made that the comparisons are invalid due to racing being a different sport, one for which no league aside from NASCAR uses a playoff format, upsets do happen in every sport. As they say, that’s why they play the games. In this case, that’s why they run the races.

But it’s really more than that, because Harvick’s elimination goes beyond a “system issue”.

Sure, he would not have been eliminated on points alone. As noted above, he would already have been crowned 2020 champion.

But the argument that Harvick had “no advantage” by winning the regular season championship is a straight-up invalid excuse. He accrued 67 playoff points leading up to the round of 8, including 45 due to his nine wins, 15 due to his regular season title and seven due to his seven stage wins.

Harvick entered the round of 8 a total of 45 points up on the Championship 4 cut line, nearly one full race worth of points.

It’s one thing to enter the round of 16 with that kind of advantage, when many drivers below the round of 12 cut line have just one or two playoff points.

But the round of 8??

Sure, 45 points is not the advantage he had in regular season points. But it is still a huge gap, one that can actually allow for some mistakes, even in a super competitive round. Plus, your rivals only have three opportunities in a given round to surpass you.

So this gap not being as big as the regular points gap after 34 races goes both ways, considering your rivals don’t have a full season to try to chip away at it.

It’s not like everyone entered the round with the same point total. I’m not sure why this even comes up at this point, because it’s simply a lie. But it goes to show that there will always be unhappy fans no matter what NASCAR does, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s almost hard to take this debate seriously anymore.

I even had one discussion before the round of 8 with somebody who actually thought Harvick’s advantage was too big and that he shouldn’t simply be “handed a Championship 4 berth” due to having so many regular season wins.

45 points, is, after all, a massive gap, and admittedly, we all thought that he was going to be in.

Well, he wasn’t.

This is despite the fact that even with multiple miscues early on, Harvick still stayed well above the cut line, as you might expect with this huge 45-point gap.

Despite Team Penske’s Joey Logano winning at Kansas Speedway from below the cut line to lock up a spot in the Championship 4, Harvick stayed 40 points ahead of the cut line with two races remaining in the round of 8.

Despite an abysmal race at Texas Motor Speedway that saw him score just one stage point en route to a 16th place finish following early contact with the wall, he was still 42 points ahead of the cut line heading into the round of 8 finale.

But even with a 42-point advantage over the cut line entering the final race of the round, he didn’t make it. Go ahead and insert an Atlanta Falcons joke.

The driver who, prior to the race at Texas Motor Speedway, stated that “I don’t count points, don’t look at points, don’t care about points” had been eliminated — on points.

So is that really a system issue?

Is that even a serious question?

Sure, he didn’t lose 42 points to the cut line and was still eliminated; he was on the wrong end of yet another upset winner, as Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott won the race from below the cut line to secure his first career Championship 4 spot.

But even with that considered, you can only lose one spot, at most, due to an upset winner in a given race. Multiple drivers can’t win a single event.

Harvick entered this race in second place in the playoff picture and still had a sizable points advantage — over multiple drivers, no less — and yet he failed to capitalize, primarily due to a lack of stage points.

He entered the race 15 points ahead of Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin and 17 points ahead of Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski, and he couldn’t stop either one of them from passing him.

“The Closer” simply needed to not get passed by three drivers in one race.

He got passed by three drivers in one race.

Again, system issue?

Or a simple lack of performance when it mattered most — and when most fans had mistakenly taken his success earlier in the year for granted?

In terms of points scored throughout the first nine races of the playoffs, Harvick actually only ranks sixth anyway, so it’s not like he dominated the playoffs and then fell out of contention because of a single bad race.

You can hate the playoff format or love the playoff format all you want. I’m not here to tell you want to think.

But regardless of the format in use or how good or bad you perceive it as, you simply can’t go changing the rules in the middle of the playoffs or pretending that it’s not a legitimate series because the outcome that you thought was going to happen or you wanted to happen didn’t happen.

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And once again, that’s why they play the game.

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