While former NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series points leader Corey Heim and full-time driver Corey LaJoie are automatically ineligible to compete for the championship because they missed two races earlier this season, similar to how Grant Enfinger was denied a playoff spot he straight-up earned in 2021, NASCAR is rubbing salt in the wound.
Hendrick Motorsports' Alex Bowman missed four races with vertigo after removing himself from the early March race at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) due to illness.
Even after the COTA race, which was the third race of the season, he was the 36th and final driver in the point standings, among full-time drivers.
Following his fourth absence, he was 144 points below the playoff cut line with 19 races remaining on the regular season schedule. For anybody, much less a driver who hasn't won in almost two years and has just one total win since March 2022, 144 points is a massive deficit to overcome.
NASCAR still gave him a playoff waiver.
Is it the right decision? Absolutely. If Bowman can manage to finish the regular season in the top 16 in the point standings after missing four races and removing himself mid-race from another, he absolutely deserves a playoff spot.
It's also an entirely pointless decision, and not just because there is almost no chance Bowman makes up that deficit, a deficit which grew to 153 points after his last-place DNF in his first race back at Bristol Motor Speedway.
In the "win and in" era, it made sense that drivers who were not competing full-time were ineligible for playoff waivers. Otherwise, drivers could show up, win once, and lock up a playoff spot with no more starts all year, and part-time drivers could pick and choose the races they felt they had the best chance of winning.
And somebody like Bowman, who missed four races and was last in points anyway, could be right back in the playoffs with a single win. Kyle Busch even won a championship after running only 25 of 36 races in 2015.
But even in the "win and in" era, nobody was willingly missing races; there is no "load management" in NASCAR.
Now in the new "Chase" era, during which only the regular season points matter when it comes to determining the playoff field, playoff waivers shouldn't even be a thing, because loss of eligibility due to missing a single race, or even a handful of races, shouldn't be a thing.
If you can get into the playoffs despite missing time, more power to you.
Bowman, who has a top finish of 23rd through the first eight race weekends of the year, is still eligible to win the championship. And he should be, because in the extremely unlikely event that he manages to rally back, he will have absolutely earned that right to not be classified as ineligible simply because he didn't run every race.
But absolutely nobody is shaking in their boots at that prospect. He might as well run for president as an independent.
Meanwhile, Heim and LaJoie, two drivers who actually have a legitimate shot at qualifying for the postseason in the Truck Series, are already eliminated, simply because NASCAR has determined that showing up is more important than being a contender.
But hey, at least "win and in" is gone, right?