Which tracks will host championship race after Homestead?

• NASCAR will rotate its season-ending championship race among a handful of tracks.
• The playoff format, specifically the winner-take-all system, is also under review.

It’s rare for NASCAR to make a major announcement that receives near-universal approval from the officially licensed masses.

But this one — rotating the season-ending championship race among a handful of tracks — was basically met with just one mild critique: Why weren’t we doing this all along during the playoff era?

Can’t fix that, but can find ways to take full advantage of a rotation that will begin next year with Homestead-Miami. And before moving on to the obvious looming question of how that rotation might look, let’s tamp down any negative vibes regarding which tracks won’t be part of the plan.

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First: Daytona. It’s quieted down in recent years, but there have always been fans who wish NASCAR would bookend the season with two Daytona visits. Once NASCAR moved Daytona’s summertime race from July to late August to end the 26-race regular season, such talk mostly died because the new setup seems like a great fit.

Maybe most importantly, as you likely noticed, quite a bit of hype surrounds the Daytona 500. It’s a year-long cycle of promotion, ticket sales, sponsor sales, etc., that begins a serious ramping-up from season’s end into February. 

A championship race would be much of the same. You don’t put two major events at a venue within a few months of each other. 

And finally, Daytona is what we once called a “plate-racing” track, and still is though with different technology than restrictor plates. Now we can call such things “pack-racing,” or “drafting tracks,” as the industry labels them.

That type of racing is great for underdogs who relish the rare opportunity to contend, but not exactly great for determining a deserving champion.

Next on the no-fly list: Talladega and Atlanta, for the above reason. Geographically, both would offer good chances of decent November weather (and maybe decent chances of good weather!) but they’re off the grid.

Charlotte? It’s a big and growing market and the weather should work, but they’d have to ditch the Roval because NASCAR indicates it’s not ready to consider a road course for championship possibilities. 

Bristol and Darlington? Fun to consider both venues with a championship at stake, but the markets don’t scream Big Event. Indianapolis? Enticing, but the weather is too dicey. Same with St. Louis and Richmond, at least for my thinning blood.

The NASCAR championship rotation might look like this

So how will that rotation look? Unless a new track sprouts in Southern California, where nothing sprouts without running an entrenched gauntlet of roadblocks, it will likely include all, or at least four, of the following.

Homestead-Miami.

Phoenix.

Las Vegas.

Nashville.

Fort Worth.

Big markets all around and solid speedways, all between a mile and mile-and-a-half.

Those five also offer a mix of tracks owned by the two biggest players: Daytona Beach-based NASCAR (Homestead and Phoenix) and Charlotte-based Speedway Motorsports (the other three). 

If the rotation will be four and not five, the best guess is one of the three Speedway Motorsports tracks will be excluded. And since they damn sure won’t exclude Vegas, that would mean either Nashville or Fort Worth is bumped. 

But what about …

Riding shotgun with this discussion is how future Cup Series champs will be crowned at whatever rotation of locales is chosen.

Off and on this season, a new playoff committee is kicking around ideas for revamping a playoff system that’s been revamped and practically overhauled since it came to life in 2004. Particularly, many are wanting something other than a winner-take-all in the final among four surviving contenders.

No offense, but that’s how Joey Logano became champ last year — kinda-sorta snuck into the final foursome and soared at Phoenix. A system that requires more than one great run at the very end is a better way to determine a worthy champ.

But they won’t go back to anything that brings the potential of a hot racer practically clinching the championship before the season’s final green flag waves.

That would basically defeat the purpose of all that discussion up above.

— Email Ken Willis at [email protected]

(This story was updated to add a video.)