As part of a wide-ranging conversation on his Actions Detrimental podcast on Monday, Denny Hamlin hosted veteran crew chief turned NBC Sports television analyst Steve Letarte, where they spent most of the episode offering fixes for the NASCAR playoff format.
A topic that has been discussed ad nauseam over the past week, Joey Logano claimed his third Cup Series championship in seven years but did so with the highest average finish in the history of the sport. Logano did not put together an entire body of work that was considered elite but won strategically won at key times, caught a lucky break with the Alex Bowman disqualification at the Roval, and navigated the final 10 races as a bottom seeded contender.
“NASCAR has stated that the playoffs are here to stay,” Hamlin told co-host Jared Allen. “It’s interesting though that they left the window open to, ‘But we could tweak.’ And what does that mean? Because I don’t know what’s going on in their minds.
“Certainly, we said on this podcast, what did we say if Joey Logano won the championship?”
Allen said ‘there would be outrage’ if Logano won the championship.
“And there has been,” Hamlin said. “For right or wrong, I will say this, you’ve got to give Joey Logano due because he, in my mind, he executed the best that day, and I would have been fine with a (Logano) or (Ryan Blaney) championship on that day.”
But Hamlin also didn’t mince words to Letarte when they brough him in the room.
“So, Steve, that’s my question is that, what it seems as though this format is doing is delegitimizing the regular season,” Hamlin said.
It’s worth noting that every regular season win pays five bonus points to be applied to the start of each playoff round. Every stage win adds a bonus point to that total. The points leader after the regular season gets 15 bonus points, the equivalent of three wins. Second place gets 10, third place gets 8, so on and so forth throughout the top-10, with the 10th place driver getting one bonus point.
There is an added weight to regular season success.
But Hamlin added his playoff format fix suggestion.
He wants NASCAR to double the stage points earned in each regular season race. So instead of 10 championship points for winning a stage, make it 20, then 18, 16 etc. Hamlin wants a seven-race Round of 16 wit the four best drivers after those seven races then competing in a three-race championship round, which is a points race.
What about Letarte’s idea?
“You win a race you’re in the playoffs,” Letarte said. “There are no, I don’t care about points, I’m not even going to count them. I’ll count them for the guys who don’t make the playoffs. You win and you’re in. We may have six, we may have sixteen. I’m not even going to set a number, the playoffs are only winners. If you don’t win, I don’t care how many points you score, you go home. Like, thank you. Winning is what matters, that’s what people cheer on, Victory Lane should be the best. So, for 26 weeks you have to win a race.
“Then we run, I could argue the format. Either all of those guys from 10 weeks or all of those guys with some sort of elimination with the last round being three races. There’s still seeding off race wins and stage wins because once Denny wins the first race of the year I want them thinking, I need to keep winning. So, I would still seed everybody in a bracket, not bracket elimination, but there’s still a first to however many winners we have.”
