There are no changes coming to the NASCAR championship format in 2025.
The question was asked on Monday during the annual preseason rules briefing held at the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina and it created quite the lively discussion amongst the officials, broadcasters and core media members in attendance.
Joey Logano won his third Cup Series championship last season but was the first driver to have done so after finishing 15th or worse in the regular season standings. He won four times, in addition to the non-points All Star Race, but lacked the season long consistency historically associated with the achievement.
In lieu of changes, NASCAR Executive Vice President John Probst says an internal industry committee has been created to have those conversations in advance of the 2026 season.
“Could we have adjusted a little bit here or there? Maybe,” said Probst. “But I don’t think we want to get in the habit of making small little tweaks every season for the playoffs.
“Where we landed was for 2025 not making any changes to the playoffs. Throughout the course of this year, we will get a working group together with some media folks, OEMs, Goodyear, drivers. … We probably talked to most of the folks one-on-one about, where are we at? What are we thinking?
“Basically, we look at that as a workstream for a group of our stakeholders this year, to look at it holistically.”
While Logano was a non-traditional champion, he won in the moments that mattered the most, advancing into the playoffs with a regular season win at Nashville Superspeedway and then winning the playoff opener at Atlanta.
Logano was initially eliminated at the conclusion of the Round of 12 finale at the Charlotte ROVAL but an Alex Bowman weight infraction disqualification snuck him back in. He responded by winning his way into the championship race the very next week at Las Vegas and then won the title deciding race at Phoenix.
Kyle Larson, who won a division leading six races, did not make the final four nor did other season long superlative drivers like Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin. At the same time, Tyler Reddick and Ryan Blaney responded to must-win scenarios at Homestead and Martinsville by doing just that.
Probst said the way the Round of 8 played out, with the exception of the race manipulation issue at Martinsville, was a feature and not a bug of the format.
“The playoffs were meant to create those moments, which I feel like they did,” Probst said. “And on the other hand, there’s the fan feedback — which we hear loud and clear — on this particular driver should have been here, or that particular driver won this many races, so he should have been automatically in and all of that.”
Probst said fan reaction to the current format, which has effectively been used since 2014 but in its current iteration since 2017, has come in three forms:
- Loves it and the storylines it produces
- Hates it, wants it to go away
- Generally likes it; wants changes but doesn’t know what
“We just didn’t get to a point where we felt like we have to do it,” Probst said. “But we hear the fans loud and clear and are looking at it actively.”
The group in attendance had a very spirited conversation about the playoff format. Probst acknowledged that a lot of the feedback and push-back centered against the one-race championship-deciding finale or a need to cycle those races to different tracks.
This is where Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior VP of competition chimed in:
“Being honest, what are we trying to fix; what’s broken,” Sawyer asked.
Probst said that is the way they try to have these conversations internally.
“He doesn’t mean that to sound defensive,” Probst said. “We have those conversations all the time.”
Everyone in the room kind of agreed that there would always be a flaw or something about any given format that someone would take exception to. Analogies were made to the NFL playoffs and how upsets happen in that world too.
“We have our 16 playoff drivers and more often that not, when you get to the 12, it’s the 12 that should be there,” Sawyer said. “And to John’s point, look at the Round of 8 last year and the races we had at Las Vegas and Homestead, and then you look at Martinsville, if we do something different, we are going to lose those moments.
“You’re not going to see guys make last lap passes at Homestead and Blaney drive from fifth to win the race.”
The conversation then moved to championships that were decided before the final race or confusing fans with format changes once every decade.
“You see right here, just within this room and the conversations that it spawned, just how complex this is,” Probst said.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
