The fact that the NASCAR playoff format has never been more scrutinized than it's been after the driver who literally scored the most points during the 36-race season was crowned champion presents the sport with an uncomfortable reality that some still seem fit to ignore, even over four weeks later.
There is no doubt that changes are coming to the postseason format. Will it be a total elimination of the playoffs, the return to a pre-2004 format? Will it be a reversion to the pre-2014 Chase format? Will it be the reduction of four rounds to three, with a four-race championship round instead of a winner-take-all season finale?
Nobody knows. But what we do know is that, one way or another, NASCAR will not win. Because they can no longer possibly win.
NASCAR faces lose-lose playoff dilemma
First and foremost, NASCAR is still chasing a fan that no longer exists. And recent reveals from the ongoing lawsuit involving 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports against NASCAR illustrates how very little respect the suits have for anybody other than the out-of-touch individuals who have drug the sport down to begin with.
They're not winning anybody over. And they haven't been winning anybody over for a very, very long time.
Lawsuit-related documents even seem to imply that recent fan-approved changes, such as returns to some of the older race tracks fans had wanted NASCAR to go back to for years, appear to have been made for ulterior motives. The real goal? Screw over other reasons series, rather than actually benefit their own.
But aside from the fact that NASCAR continues to chase ghosts of the fanbase that once existed in the days of Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace, fans they have pushed away themselves with an extremely lengthy list of poor decisions, the fact is that NASCAR has backed themselves into a corner they can't get out of with whatever they do next.
For years, we've heard that NASCAR needs to go back to crowning a champion by totaling points over the course of the full season, like IndyCar and Formula 1 do. When Joey Logano won the 2024 championship after a 15th place finish in the regular season standings, those complaints were even louder than they were even in 2015, when Kyle Busch won the title despite missing 11 races.
Ironically, it was almost the saving grace of Larson's surprise second title, even for as controversial as many still claim it was. Yet despite his full-season points "championship", the complaints over how the champion was crowned were somehow louder than they were when Logano, who was still outside of the top 10 in total points despite a red-hot three-win postseason, won his third.
It's so easy to simply say that NASCAR fans are going to complain regardless, and it's not exactly inaccurate. I've said for years that if NASCAR opts for a full-season points format, complaints are actually going to get louder.
Stage racing could literally determine a champion. Look at 2025; Larson led in full-season points, but he wasn't even inside the top three if you only include race results, not stage results. In fact, the best two drivers in 2025 were Christopher Bell and Chase Elliott, based on race results and race results alone.
Does anybody really want the champion to come down to who was running seventh instead of eighth during some random lap in a mid-April race?
Lest we forget that stage racing was only introduced in 2017, when the modern playoff format was already in place, as a way to enhance the playoffs with additional playoff points, both via short-term race strategy and long-term season strategy. So having stage racing without playoffs is almost more ridiculous than any playoff format, in and of itself.
But that begs a further question: is NASCAR's points system flawed? Elliott won only two races in 2025, both with a last-lap pass.
Was he really one of the two best drivers all year, or was he merely rewarded for staying out of trouble better than those actually at the front more often than not?
It's been said that his top 20 finish streak was one of the most overrated streaks of the modern era, and for as much as the NASCAR fanbase actually does benefit from Elliott running well, it's probably true. And quite frankly, if NASCAR starts crowning champions by rewarding those who hide out in 15th every week, that isn't right either.
Yet back-to-back 15th place finishes is worth more than a win and a DNF. That certainly is not the case in IndyCar or Formula 1, which both utilize point systems that are universally respected as being point systems that don't just reward consistency, but reward being good consistently, not being barely average by riding around.
So is a modified playoff format the answer?
In one word, no.
Because I don't know that there is one.
The mere word "playoffs" doesn't sit well with NASCAR fans at this point, and although the rules are the same for everyone, you can't really blame the fans for their ongoing frustrations.
Any playoff modifications whatsoever will be viewed as gimmicky, and quite frankly, no such changes to the playoffs would be substantial enough to reward the full-season success that NASCAR fans think they want (even though, with stage racing, they don't; they just might not know it yet).
NASCAR is in a lose-lose situation, made worse by the fact that their true feelings about those who have made the sport what it is – and the fans – have been laid bare by the lawsuit that is slowly but surely exposing them for who they really are. Regardless of what they decide to do with the playoffs, they are setting themselves up for even more blowback.