The status quo of how NASCAR crowns champions isn’t how Dale Earnhardt Jr. would draw it up.
“Everyone has a different feeling about the way things should go,” Earnhardt said this past week on his Dale Jr Download podcast. “I’m a traditionalist. I think that the best way to determine your champion is the season-long race of running all of the races, the way we used to do it years ago. I feel like that’s the purest way to know that this person did it all right.”
He is referring to the season long format that saw his father win the championship a record seven times, matching Richard Petty, who won most of his under the season long Latford System as well. Jimmie Johnson also won seven championships, six under the Chase for the Championship format, a 10-race points battle between the most points earners across the regular season.
Johnson won his seventh under the current playoff format, one that emphasizes winning and small sample size points races, which Earnhardt argues is made for television.
“But this current format gives us better moments, gives us more drama,” Earnhardt said. “People can argue, and oh yeah you’re going to tell me look at the attendance, look viewership, all those things. I don’t give a shit. This stuff right now, the way they have the eliminations and all that, I can’t look away. It is here for a reason.
“There’s a reason why they changed it. Is it the right way? It isn’t. Is it perfect? No, it’s not. That’s why it’s always kind of changed. That’s why the Chase or the playoffs, whatever they want to call it, we called it the Chase and then now we call it the playoff. It’s all convoluted. There’s been so many iterations of this and they keep adding people to it, they keep changing.”
But NASCAR says, after the outrage over how Joey Logano emerged victorious in the playoff for the third time in seven seasons, albeit with the worst average finish in the history of the division for a champion this season, that changes will be considered in the off-season.
“What they’re doing there is just leaving themselves the opportunity to open that door if they feel like there’s a ton of criticism, ton of pushback from the fans,” Earnhardt said. “Because let’s face it whether they will admit it or nor, NASCAR absolutely ebbs and flows due to whatever might be the loudest conversation on social media.”
Whatever NASCAR does, Earnhardt said, he just wishes the championship didn’t come down to one race.
“It will continue to change because they’re in search of that perfection, they’re in search of the perfect format,” Earnhardt said. “I don’t know if that exists. I won’t be mad if they change it, I won’t be mad if they leave it alone. Do I think this is great? No. Is there a better way? Probably. But I don’t pretend to know what that is. I think that to crown the champion, we need a little bit more of a sample size than one event.”
But he also urged his fellow traditionalists to give up on the Latford System.
“There’s no going back to the season-long championship format,” Earnhardt said. “It’s just not going to happen. NASCAR is trying to find the best version of this format, and it will keep changing until they get closer to that.”
