In the constant seesaw between sporting integrity and entertainment, NASCAR seemingly deferred to the latter when making two key changes to the 2024 Cup Series playoffs.
Going into the second round this season, everyone expressed conviction that Talladega and the Charlotte ROVAL made this the wild card round, where high levels of attrition or randomness could disrupt performance. Now NASCAR will feature two such rounds at the start of the playoffs with Atlanta and Watkins Glen kicking off the chase for the championship next season.
“I don’t like it,” said Denny Hamlin last week. “You continue to make this a game of chance.”
Does Ben Kennedy, the NASCAR executive most responsible for scheduling, view it this way?
“No, not really,” said Kennedy last week during the schedule unveiling press conference. “That’s something we’ve talked about quite a bit internally, and we’ve debated as a scheduling team, certainly (the) competition (department) has weighed in, and we’ve had conversations with teams around what this could look like.
“It’s certainly something that we hold very dear to us is making sure that the quality of the racing product and the parity is really strong.”
Kennedy said the addition of Atlanta, which is now a drafting track, will test driver skill and that is something Hamlin took exception to when Sportsnaut asked about it last week.
“One of the common quotes you’ll hear from leadership is ‘we like to test our drivers,’ and that’s silly,” Hamlin said. “You’re testing their luck, not their skill. We like to cut the sample size smaller and smaller every year and this year, nearly having our regular season champion knocked out, surely having a year like next will get the job done.”
Chase Elliott, who is usually reserved about sharing strong opinions, said Hamlin was “spot on” when asked about it on Saturday before the race weekend at the ROVAL.
“They don’t ask my opinion, and I don’t really want them to ask my opinion (but) I can get behind what Denny said about that because it does put you in a tough spot,” he said. “There’s so much out of your control when you go to those speedway races.
“You can put the perfect day together and end up crashed or whatever it may be.”
Denny Hamlin says NASCAR’s new format is ‘a gimmick’
Hamlin continued his rebuke of the decision to add Atlanta to the playoffs on Monday morning in the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast.
“Am I the only person who sees this for what is — in that it’s becoming more and more of a gimmick,” Hamlin asked. “They might as well just have us run backwards in a figure 8. The champion will be whoever has the biggest balls and doesn’t lift in a figure 8 race.
“That’ll be our champion. Might as well.
“I say this equally as a driver and owner, because I invest so much of my money back into this sport and we try to run well and put fast cars on the track, but when you put these, what you know are tracks where you’re not seeing skill but whom survives the crashes and makes the right move at the end … it just seems like NASCAR’s objectives, my objectives as a team owner and driver are not aligned here.
“We are grasping because there is nothing from the TV ratings that suggest they should keep making these wacky moves.”
Both Hamlin and Elliott agreed that Watkins Glen isn’t so much a wild card race as the addition of a second superspeedway race but having 20 percent of the races that decides a champion coming down to who did or didn’t crash dilutes the value of the format.
Ryan Blaney remained diplomatic but you could tell this wasn’t his first choice, even from a driver that has won three times at Talladega and generally enjoys that style of racing.
“That was interesting that they fired off the playoffs like that, but there’s nothing we can do about it,” Blaney said. “We have no say in the matter, so I guess fans wanted to see pack racing and that’s what we’re going to give them.”
Are two superspeedways in playoffs a good idea?
His teammate, two-time Cup Series champion Joey Logano, was less diplomatic on Saturday.
“I don’t know that I agree with putting two superspeedways in the playoffs.”
Kyle Busch was more on the diplomatic side.
“Well, it’s certainly unique,” Busch said. “Atlanta is a kind of a crap shoot superspeedway course race but Watkins Glen, it’s more of a normal race and one we have always had on the schedule. Bristol is my favorite track in that round so it should be fun.”
William Byron has won two of the four races at the track since it was reconfigured into a miniature superspeedway but he’s “nervous about it” being added to the playoffs because he has crashed out of his other two starts.
“This year when you went to Atlanta, it was a great chance to get some points, but not really planning for anything else outside of that,” Byron said. “It definitely throws a wrench into the playoff format.”
His teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, Alex Bowman, summed it up well.
“They love their drama don’t they,” Bowman said with a laugh. “It’s going to be dramatic. There will be storylines that will be entertaining for fans but I just look at is as tracks that we have to go execute at and do our jobs.”
The one driver most enthusiastic about it was Michael McDowell, the 2021 Daytona 500 winner and a driver who has won both Cup and Xfinity Series races on road courses.
“I like the ways those tracks set up for us, obviously and I just hope we’re a part of it again to see if it changes my opinion one way or the other,” McDowell said.
Full circle, Erik Jones also hopes to be a part of it after a couple of years in a row of missing the playoffs but bought into the perspective that the addition of both Atlanta and Watkins Glen diversifies the schedule and challenges the versatility of a team.
“I hope I’m in it but Atlanta makes it tough,” Jones said. “It’s tough on the teams and drivers but the championship is supposed to be about versatility. And if you’ve gotten through that round and you’ve advanced, you’ve shown yourselves to be a contender in my opinion.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.