The subject of rule changes was brought up more than once during the offseason between the 2024 and 2025 NASCAR Cup Series seasons, with much of it having to do with the idea that the playoff format needed to be changed following a 2024 postseason which saw Team Penske's Joey Logano crowned champion, despite a 15th place finish in the regular season standings.
The playoff format is set to remain the same for the 12th year in a row, with any potential changes to be assessed during the season and potentially (but not definitely) implemented in 2026.
But that didn't mean nothing would change for 2025. Instead, NASCAR fans got another rule change that pretty much nobody specifically asked for, and they got it just before the start of the new season: a bonus point for running the fastest lap.
NASCAR adds fastest lap point
Fastest lap times have already long been shown to fans during races, and they were officially sponsored by Xfinity. In 2025, the Cup Series Premier Partner is set to go one step further, sponsoring the Xfinity Fastest Lap program to award a bonus point to drivers across all three series.
The announcement came as somewhat of a surprise, given how largely irrelevant "fastest lap" is, in and of itself, during a NASCAR race, specifically a superspeedway/drafting race. The fact that running a fastest lap can literally be the difference between advancing and not advancing in the playoffs has certainly raised some eyebrows.
On that very note, anybody is eligible for the point. So theoretically the non-playoff teammate of a playoff driver who needs his rival to lose the fastest lap point can pit for new tires to take that point away. We have seen that happen countless times in Formula 1, ever since the fastest lap point was introduced in 2019.
But in Formula 1, team orders are actually legal. In NASCAR, that is not the case, and the sanctioning body is actually aiming to crack down on race manipulation after what we saw from manufacturers Chevrolet and Toyota at Martinsville Speedway in November.
This makes the introduction of this bonus point even more curiously timed, perhaps even in a good way, since the crackdown on race manipulation could force this new point to work exactly as intended.
It may also be worth mentioning that Formula 1 is dropping this bonus point for 2025 and beyond, due to the overall relative insignificance of running the fastest lap during a given race – and the fact that it often did not work as intended.
The major difference between Formula 1 and NASCAR here is, of course, the fact that only the top 10 finishers score points in Formula 1, and thus only those 10 drivers were actually eligible to collect the point with the fastest lap. In NASCAR, that point is guaranteed to go to somebody each race, which should be a positive thing.
But even beyond all of that, the inclusion of this bonus point is strange for a number of reasons.
Give Xfinity credit for stepping up and enhancing their partnership with NASCAR to sponsor it. But Busch Light, another Premier Partner, sponsors the Pole Award, and no points are awarded for taking pole, which is something that fans have been wanting to see changed for years.
NASCAR also no longer awards a point to any driver who leads a lap during a race, and points are no longer awarded to the driver who leads the most laps. The logic behind this is the fact that stages and stage points have been in play since 2017.
Still, the fact that a driver can be running in 10th place at some random predetermined lap during a race and score a point, yet the driver who leads the most laps could technically end up with nothing, is baffling.
And the fact that the only change to the race scoring system since stages were introduced eight years ago came via this new Xfinity Fastest Lap program is even more so.
Even if you ignore the whole potential race manipulation aspect of it, it still makes clinching/cut line scenarios a lot more confusing in playoff cutoff races, considering the fact that anyone can, at any time, run the race's fastest lap – and thus potentially take it away from someone who is also battling for a spot in the next round.
It may not directly hurt the sport; in fact, it probably won't. But it's not exactly the change that many fans were hoping for as far as the potential playoff impact is concerned.
The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season is scheduled to begin on Sunday, February 16 with the 67th annual Daytona 500. Fox is set to provide live coverage of the "Great American Race" from Daytona International Speedway beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET. Start a free trial of FuboTV today and don't miss any of the action!