The NASCAR season finale moving back to Homestead-Miami Speedway next season, the first year that it will begin rotating across several climate friendly tracks in November, is only the first part of the championship that needs to be decided before then.
A committee of NASCAR insiders have formed a committee to discuss making changes to the now 11-year-old format after Joey Logano won last season with the worst statistical averages of anyone to be crowned by the end of the year.
Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch discussed potential ideas on Monday during a conversation on the Actions Detrimental podcast.
One idea, is that instead of the Final Four running a one race, best finisher take all showdown, that they participate in a most points out of three races championship.
Busch had mixed feelings on that due to what he experienced as part of the 10 race Chase for the Championship points format.
“I’ve heard a lot of variances. I kind of think the three or four-race one is pretty cool, but if you have one bad race in those three or four races, then you automatically sort of eliminate yourself unless somebody eliminates (themselves) by having a bad race,” Busch said.
“I always kind of hated the 10-race thing. How many times did you or I have a bad race or two in that 10-race format and then you’re fifth in points? You don’t have the opportunity to win it because Jimmie [Johnson] perfects it and he’s good all the way through.”
Johnson won six of his seven championships in the Chase for the Championship points race format.
Busch likes that the three-race founds under the status quo rewards either consistency or outright winning.
“When they started having the three-race ones, where it was like you can point your way through if you want,” Busch said. “If you’re good enough and you can win and automatically put your way through and it resets each time and it resets with the points that you have the whole year, because you’ve been strong the whole year, I felt like that was the most fair system that we’ve had. But it coming down to a one-race take-all moment, I don’t know.”
Hamlin likes the status quo, but with a caveat.
“I’m okay with the elimination every three races as long as those who perform well during the regular season have a far enough jump in head start,” Hamlin said.
His suggestion was doubling all the playoff points earned from their current levels. Instead of five points for a win, make it 10. Instead of 15 bonus points for the regular season championship, make in 30. Instead of 10 points for second place in the regular season, make that 20 points, so on and so forth, but keep everything else the same.
“It then really does make it rewarding to go out there and perform and get bonus points during the regular season, and it makes it harder for our favorites to get eliminated early,” Hamlin said.
Hamlin also would reduce the playoff field size from 16 to 12. This is a response to Harrison Burton, who was 33rd in points last year winning Daytona and then be part of the Round of 16.
“I think that will eliminate the guy in 33rd that’s going to win a race, making it into the playoffs,” Hamlin said. “I also believe that once you get eliminated, you should go back to whatever points position you were or where you should be.”
In other words, instead of Burton finishing no worse than 16th, his idea would have placed Burton right back into outside the top-30 with his elimination after the Round of 16 last year.
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