The topic of how the NASCAR Cup Series championship should be decided has been a very intense discussion since the initial ‘Chase For the Cup’ format was revealed ahead of the 2004 NASCAR Cup Series season.
In the years since that format shifted and was reshaped into what is now the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, the conversation has only gotten more intense, and voices have grown louder and louder. At the end of the day, some people want entertainment, while others want legitimacy when it comes to a champion being crowned in the top division of NASCAR.
According to Jeff Gluck of The Athletic, NASCAR created a special Playoff Committee heading into the season, which would have periodic meetings throughout the year to discuss the current Playoff format, and whether there should be tweaks to the Playoffs, or if there should be a new format instituted altogether going into the 2026 season.
Joey Logano winning the NASCAR Cup Series championship a season ago with statistically one of the worst overall seasons of any champion in NASCAR history did nothing to calm the whispers from the NASCAR fanbase that the current winner-take-all one-race championship format needs to be abolished. Logano had an all-time worst 17.1 average finish for a champion in 2024.
According to Gluck, who spoke about the Playoff committee on this past week’s episode of ‘The Teardown’ Podcast, the committee has had two meetings this year, one during the Daytona 500 week, and the other during the week of the Coca-Cola 600. And Gluck says the consensus from those meetings was that something had to change.
“This is what I can tell you, the first meeting was in Daytona [in February], and the second meeting was [during] Coke 600 week,” Gluck explained. “I would say there was a lot, there was a ton of movement toward [The Playoff Format] is definitely going to change. I would have told you a few weeks ago that there was probably a 90-95% chance that the one-race Playoff was dead next year. I would think it was going to be gone. The room, everybody just started talking about — there’s been a lot of talk about the credibility of the format, and why there needs to be a bigger sample size, and all of the stuff that you hear people talk about.”
Mark Martin, who, along with Gluck, is among the 30-40 members of the Playoff committee, has been vocal about his desire for NASCAR to return to the season-long point format, which was used to determine a champion through the 2003 season.
Back in May, Martin put out a poll on his X account on the matter, and had four choices for his followers to choose from in regard to their preferred Playoff format. The choices were: Current playoff, 10-race Chase, Classic 36 race season, and “something else”.
After 21,411 votes, the classic 36-race season obtained 60% of the vote, while the current playoff format only received 7%, the 10-race chase received 23%, and “something else” received 10%. What this meant is that the full-season championship format beat the collective total of all potential Playoff formats 60% to 40% in Martin’s poll.
When Martin showed this to NASCAR, Gluck says that NASCAR was unsure if the results were a true indication of the full NASCAR fanbase or if it was just oldschool fans that were following Martin on X. Due to that, Gluck offered to run the same exact poll on his X account.
Gluck’s poll garnered 30,307 votes, and the results didn’t stray far from those that Martin received through his poll.
The full-season championship was the preferred championship format for 53% of the people in Gluck’s poll, while the current format was again the lowest voted upon format at a mere 8%.
These polls, paired with the conversation at the Playoff committee meetings had Gluck feeling confident that the Playoff format would for sure be changing in one way or another. But as Gluck notes, the committee won’t be making any decisions about a Playoff format, they’re simply a feedback committee, which gives feedback to NASCAR, and the television partners.
The latter of which doesn’t seem too keen on making changes.
“That’s the hang-up,” Gluck says of TV partner NBC, which has possession of the television rights of the final races of the season for the next seven years. “NBC, obviously, has signed up for over $1 billion a year. They’re obviously broadcasting the championship round. This is where it gets difficult for me, because I wish this were not the case at all. I wish TV didn’t have this big of a voice. I wish NASCAR was just going to say, ‘Here’s what we think we want to do, here’s what this committee is saying, blah, blah, blah, here’s what Mark Martin is saying,’ or whatever it is. But TV wants a Playoff. They want eliminations, and I don’t know exactly what they want, but they want something close to what is happening now. They don’t want to go too far from that, too radically different.”
If the TV partners don’t want anything radically different, that may put NASCAR in a tough situation.
“I think NASCAR is in a position, where they can’t — I mean, I guess they could, but they’d really, really, really, really piss off their TV partner –to say, ‘Hey, you just signed up for this for a certain number of years, now, we’re going to change it and we’re going to ignore your input. That sounds great, but that’s also not great business, I would say,” Gluck opined.
However, if NASCAR is going to make any changes to the Playoff format at all, at least for the 2026 season, they’re going to have to quickly make decisions, as they are under pressure to release next year’s schedule. And that pressure to turn around the 2026 schedule has Gluck feeling that there will be no changes, at least for next season.
“The schedule has got to come out sooner rather than later. We are almost in August, so NASCAR is under pressure to get the schedule out. Bottom line. Period. The Playoff format is not set yet. Bottom line. Period. So, it’s feeling like, to me, and I’m not speaking for NASCAR, but it’s feeling like to me the direction they are going is they may have to postpone whatever changes may be for a year,” Gluck said.
If there aren’t changes made, NBC may be happy, but the sport’s fanbase, which has grown tired of gimmick, upon gimmick, upon gimmick, will likely groan even louder for another year. Whether NASCAR or its TV partners like it or not, something is going to have to give at some point when it comes to the method by which a champion is determined in the NASCAR Cup Series.
