Category: MotorSports

5 ways NASCAR could change its controversial playoff format

NASCAR’s polarizing playoff system has many fans fuming. Here are 5 ways to tweak the Cup Series before 2025.

Joey Logano captured his third NASCAR Cup Series championship last Sunday at Phoenix Raceway in a duel against Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney – but the outcome of the race left many fans fuming over the playoff format, which for the second successive year crowned a champion who was altogether unimpressive through much of the regular season.

In 2021, Kyle Larson dominated the NASCAR Cup Series, racking up 10 race victories en route to his first career championship. It was the type of year that evoked memories of Jeff Gordon’s 13-win season in 1998, where one team continually proved it was the best in the field and was rewarded at the end of the year.

Such a dominant year in NASCAR’s top series is not the norm in the playoff era, however. In 2023, Ryan Blaney overcame a horrendous regular season, buoyed by a single race win at Charlotte that cemented his place in the playoffs. Over that 26-race span, Blaney had just 12 top-10 finishes, and nearly as many finishes of 21st of worse (10). Yet the No. 12 team was able to survive the first elimination round, won at Talladega to get into the final eight, won at Martinsville to race for a championship, and beat Kyle Larson and William Byron at Phoenix to win his first title. Blaney set a modern-era record for fewest Top-5 finishes by a champion with eight.

To a certain fan, or to a pro-playoffs NASCAR executive, Blaney’s Cinderella story run through the playoffs was exactly the type of storyline and dramatic triumph the format was designed to deliver. Plus, Blaney is a fan favorite and had never won before, so many fans were happy to see him celebrate, even if Larson and Byron were much better over the course of the season.

Tensions have finally boiled over in 2024, though, after the same exact thing just happened again. Logano one-upped his teammate, compiling just seven Top-5 finishes over the course of a championship season but winning two of the last four races, and ending 2024 with an average finishing position of 17.1. To make matters worse, a NASCAR staffer told Denny Hamlin after a controversial Martinsville race that social media users criticizing the format were merely “bots.”

Following the season finale, it appears the message is getting through to NASCAR that many fans (not to mention drivers, teams and even broadcasters) are unsatisfied. NASCAR’s Elton Sawyer confirmed this week that the organization would be taking a “deeper dive” into the playoff system, saying that “we will take input from our fans, our competitors, and our industry stakeholders this off-season, and if there is a way to tweak it, make it better, we will do that.”

So how can NASCAR tweak it’s playoff formula to create a better product for its fans and competitors? Let’s take a look at how the system currently works:

How the current NASCAR playoff system works

NASCAR has continually tweaked its format since the 2004 introduction of the “Chase,” but as of 2024, here’s how it works in a nutshell:

  1. A 26-race regular season. Race winners in the regular season automatically qualify for the 16-driver playoffs, unless there are more than 16 unique winners. Drivers accrue playoff points throughout the year by winning races and stages, and the playoff points persist through each playoff reset, excluding the final round.
  2.  The 16 playoff drivers begin a 3-race Round of 16. Points are reset from the regular season, and only playoff points carry over. In each round of the playoffs, winning a race guarantees you a spot in the next round, regardless of your points standing.
  3. After three races, four drivers are eliminated and a three-race Round of 12 begins. The process repeats with the Round of 8, until we are left with a final Championship 4 heading into the final race of the year.
  4. The Championship 4 drivers begin the final race even on points, and are unable to score any stage points throughout the race. The remaining playoff driver who finishes ahead of the other three is the champion.

Here are six options for NASCAR consider as we head into the 2025 season:

Option 1: Keep the playoffs, but spread the championship round over three races

The Championship 4 would battle over the last three races to earn the most points, similar to the 10-race Chase format used in the past. Playoff points wouldn’t carry over, but stage points would count in the final three races. – Austin Konenski, Motorsports Wire

Option 2: Denny Hamlin’s format

Hamlin has been a vocal critic of the current playoff format, and has proposed his own variation that keeps one round of eliminations. Under the Denny format there’d be:

  1. Double points for the 26-race regular season
  2. 16 drivers qualifying for the playoffs
  3. A round of seven races including all 16 playoff drivers still eligible. Following the seventh race, the Championship 4 would advance according to the points standings
  4. Points would reset to zero for the Championship four, and the new points leader after the final three races would be the champion

Option 3: Move the championship race every year

Of all the issues NASCAR faces, I really don’t believe that the playoff format as it exists today is near the top of the list. The departure of major household name stars over the decades, the general cultural shifts among sports fans in the country – it’s worth noting that MLB World Series and NBA Finals viewership has also plummeted in the last 15 years – and the limitations of the Next Gen car (and previous car iterations) all contribute more to determining NASCAR’s TV ratings than the playoff format does.

And, in fact, the format in 2024 delivered incredible moments in the second half of the playoffs. Las Vegas, Homestead, Martinsville and Phoenix produced incredible races and storylines. As a viewer, the on-track product and lap-to-lap tension imposed by the format was great.

My biggest issue with the current format of a one-race championship decider is that NASCAR is staging it at the same track every year. Certain teams and drivers naturally perform better at short tracks, intermediate tracks, superspeedways and road courses than others, but if you’re always going to the same place, you’re giving some drivers a built-in advantage.

Take Ryan Blaney, for example. If you’re Blaney, you’d hope that Phoenix hosts the finale for the rest of your career, as he’s significantly better than any other driver in the field at Phoenix in recent years. In his last eight races there, Blaney’s average finish is 3.9 – nearly six spots better than the next active drivers on the list (William Byron: 9.4 and Kyle Larson: 9.5).

Tyler Reddick, meanwhile, began last Sunday’s race essentially knowing the deck was stacked against him, as his 14.4 average finish ranks 14th among all drivers in that span. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t a factor the entire race.

It’s also worth seriously asking whether Phoenix is capable of producing a great finale for the television audience with the Next Gen car. The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck conducts a poll after every Cup Series race asking his followers “was this a good race?” Over the last six races at Phoenix races, on average only 48.7 percent of the thousands of voters said that a race at Phoenix was good. Over that same period, tracks like Kansas and Homestead have never failed the “was it good” test, or even failed to get 80% of the “yes” vote.

NASCAR has plenty of great tracks that can host a finale in November, from Las Vegas to Homestead to Charlotte to Darlington. Yes, NASCAR spent millions renovating Phoenix Raceway to be the “home of the championship race,” but that shouldn’t get in the way of providing new challenges to teams year-to-year and more interesting races to fans. – Nick Schwartz

Option 4: Steve Letarte’s format

Letarte shared his own potential format on Denny Hamlin’s podcast. Under the Letarte format, only race winners would qualify for the playoffs, and the championship round would be contested across three races.

  1. Race winners from the first 26 races of the year would advance to the playoffs, no matter how few or how many race winners there are. No driver could point their way into the playoffs without winning a race.
  2. The playoff drivers would be seeded based upon the bonus points they earned over the course of the regular season through race wins and stage wins. The top-seeded driver would start the playoffs with more points than the No. 2 driver, and so on.
  3. A final group of four would run a three-race championship round to determine a champion. (Letarte was open as to how many eliminations would take place before that, with either a seven-race round leading into the final three, or something closer to the elimination system we have now.)
  4. The venues in the final round would rotate in order every few years.

Option 5: Revert to the classic full-season points structure

To be clear: There is no way NASCAR will ever go back to the classic 36-race cumulative points system, and there’s not really any evidence that it would help in the first place or that it would provide season-long drama.

There are diehard fans who keep track of what the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series points would have been under the old system, and they’ll be happy to tell you that Christopher Bell would have edged Chase Elliott by five points at Phoenix, having overcome a massive 400+ point deficit in the final 12 weeks. What an incredibly exciting run that would have been!

Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way and it’s not the ’90s anymore. Drivers and teams would strategize and execute races in a completely different way if there weren’t stage points or playoff-clinching wins to chase after. If you desperately want full-season points, there’s always Formula 1 (which has produced a whopping two close championship battles that weren’t clinched multiple races ahead of time in the last nine years). – Nick Schwartz

Option 6: Keep things exactly the way they are

There is nothing wrong with the NASCAR Cup Series playoff format, and if you disagree, hear me out. I started covering NASCAR in 2017, as long as this playoff format has been around, so I don’t know anything different. But NASCAR fans do, and therein lies a huge part of the problem.

Some fans don’t like the current playoff format because they can’t let go of the belief that the most dominant driver and team throughout the season should be the champion. That’s how it worked before, and that’s what many want back. But that’s not interesting, it’s not comparable to other sports and it potentially allows the championship to be decided multiple races before the season finale.

“You can have a great regular season; it seeds you better for the playoffs, right?” Joey Logano said after winning his third title. “Now, that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to go all the way to the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup Finals or the NBA Finals. It doesn’t matter. It might help you. It’s the same way in NASCAR.”

The current playoff format works, chaos and controversies and all. It’s engaging, makes every playoff race matter and further emphasizes the importance of a strong regular season.

The regular season just isn’t everything, like pretty much every other sport. And to say a NASCAR champion’s title isn’t real if they’re not the strongest driver through all 36 races is, as Logano put it, “bull-[expletive].” – Michelle Martinelli

5 ways NASCAR could change its controversial playoff format

NASCAR’s polarizing playoff system has many fans fuming. Here are 5 ways to tweak the Cup Series before 2025.

Joey Logano captured his third NASCAR Cup Series championship last Sunday at Phoenix Raceway in a duel against Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney – but the outcome of the race left many fans fuming over the playoff format, which for the second successive year crowned a champion who was altogether unimpressive through much of the regular season.

In 2021, Kyle Larson dominated the NASCAR Cup Series, racking up 10 race victories en route to his first career championship. It was the type of year that evoked memories of Jeff Gordon’s 13-win season in 1998, where one team continually proved it was the best in the field and was rewarded at the end of the year.

Such a dominant year in NASCAR’s top series is not the norm in the playoff era, however. In 2023, Ryan Blaney overcame a horrendous regular season, buoyed by a single race win at Charlotte that cemented his place in the playoffs. Over that 26-race span, Blaney had just 12 top-10 finishes, and nearly as many finishes of 21st of worse (10). Yet the No. 12 team was able to survive the first elimination round, won at Talladega to get into the final eight, won at Martinsville to race for a championship, and beat Kyle Larson and William Byron at Phoenix to win his first title. Blaney set a modern-era record for fewest Top-5 finishes by a champion with eight.

To a certain fan, or to a pro-playoffs NASCAR executive, Blaney’s Cinderella story run through the playoffs was exactly the type of storyline and dramatic triumph the format was designed to deliver. Plus, Blaney is a fan favorite and had never won before, so many fans were happy to see him celebrate, even if Larson and Byron were much better over the course of the season.

Tensions have finally boiled over in 2024, though, after the same exact thing just happened again. Logano one-upped his teammate, compiling just seven Top-5 finishes over the course of a championship season but winning two of the last four races, and ending 2024 with an average finishing position of 17.1. To make matters worse, a NASCAR staffer told Denny Hamlin after a controversial Martinsville race that social media users criticizing the format were merely “bots.”

Following the season finale, it appears the message is getting through to NASCAR that many fans (not to mention drivers, teams and even broadcasters) are unsatisfied. NASCAR’s Elton Sawyer confirmed this week that the organization would be taking a “deeper dive” into the playoff system, saying that “we will take input from our fans, our competitors, and our industry stakeholders this off-season, and if there is a way to tweak it, make it better, we will do that.”

So how can NASCAR tweak it’s playoff formula to create a better product for its fans and competitors? Let’s take a look at how the system currently works:

How the current NASCAR playoff system works

NASCAR has continually tweaked its format since the 2004 introduction of the “Chase,” but as of 2024, here’s how it works in a nutshell:

  1. A 26-race regular season. Race winners in the regular season automatically qualify for the 16-driver playoffs, unless there are more than 16 unique winners. Drivers accrue playoff points throughout the year by winning races and stages, and the playoff points persist through each playoff reset, excluding the final round.
  2.  The 16 playoff drivers begin a 3-race Round of 16. Points are reset from the regular season, and only playoff points carry over. In each round of the playoffs, winning a race guarantees you a spot in the next round, regardless of your points standing.
  3. After three races, four drivers are eliminated and a three-race Round of 12 begins. The process repeats with the Round of 8, until we are left with a final Championship 4 heading into the final race of the year.
  4. The Championship 4 drivers begin the final race even on points, and are unable to score any stage points throughout the race. The remaining playoff driver who finishes ahead of the other three is the champion.

Here are six options for NASCAR consider as we head into the 2025 season:

Option 1: Keep the playoffs, but spread the championship round over three races

The Championship 4 would battle over the last three races to earn the most points, similar to the 10-race Chase format used in the past. Playoff points wouldn’t carry over, but stage points would count in the final three races. – Austin Konenski, Motorsports Wire

Option 2: Denny Hamlin’s format

Hamlin has been a vocal critic of the current playoff format, and has proposed his own variation that keeps one round of eliminations. Under the Denny format there’d be:

  1. Double points for the 26-race regular season
  2. 16 drivers qualifying for the playoffs
  3. A round of seven races including all 16 playoff drivers still eligible. Following the seventh race, the Championship 4 would advance according to the points standings
  4. Points would reset to zero for the Championship four, and the new points leader after the final three races would be the champion

Option 3: Move the championship race every year

Of all the issues NASCAR faces, I really don’t believe that the playoff format as it exists today is near the top of the list. The departure of major household name stars over the decades, the general cultural shifts among sports fans in the country – it’s worth noting that MLB World Series and NBA Finals viewership has also plummeted in the last 15 years – and the limitations of the Next Gen car (and previous car iterations) all contribute more to determining NASCAR’s TV ratings than the playoff format does.

And, in fact, the format in 2024 delivered incredible moments in the second half of the playoffs. Las Vegas, Homestead, Martinsville and Phoenix produced incredible races and storylines. As a viewer, the on-track product and lap-to-lap tension imposed by the format was great.

My biggest issue with the current format of a one-race championship decider is that NASCAR is staging it at the same track every year. Certain teams and drivers naturally perform better at short tracks, intermediate tracks, superspeedways and road courses than others, but if you’re always going to the same place, you’re giving some drivers a built-in advantage.

Take Ryan Blaney, for example. If you’re Blaney, you’d hope that Phoenix hosts the finale for the rest of your career, as he’s significantly better than any other driver in the field at Phoenix in recent years. In his last eight races there, Blaney’s average finish is 3.9 – nearly six spots better than the next active drivers on the list (William Byron: 9.4 and Kyle Larson: 9.5).

Tyler Reddick, meanwhile, began last Sunday’s race essentially knowing the deck was stacked against him, as his 14.4 average finish ranks 14th among all drivers in that span. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t a factor the entire race.

It’s also worth seriously asking whether Phoenix is capable of producing a great finale for the television audience with the Next Gen car. The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck conducts a poll after every Cup Series race asking his followers “was this a good race?” Over the last six races at Phoenix races, on average only 48.7 percent of the thousands of voters said that a race at Phoenix was good. Over that same period, tracks like Kansas and Homestead have never failed the “was it good” test, or even failed to get 80% of the “yes” vote.

NASCAR has plenty of great tracks that can host a finale in November, from Las Vegas to Homestead to Charlotte to Darlington. Yes, NASCAR spent millions renovating Phoenix Raceway to be the “home of the championship race,” but that shouldn’t get in the way of providing new challenges to teams year-to-year and more interesting races to fans. – Nick Schwartz

Option 4: Steve Letarte’s format

Letarte shared his own potential format on Denny Hamlin’s podcast. Under the Letarte format, only race winners would qualify for the playoffs, and the championship round would be contested across three races.

  1. Race winners from the first 26 races of the year would advance to the playoffs, no matter how few or how many race winners there are. No driver could point their way into the playoffs without winning a race.
  2. The playoff drivers would be seeded based upon the bonus points they earned over the course of the regular season through race wins and stage wins. The top-seeded driver would start the playoffs with more points than the No. 2 driver, and so on.
  3. A final group of four would run a three-race championship round to determine a champion. (Letarte was open as to how many eliminations would take place before that, with either a seven-race round leading into the final three, or something closer to the elimination system we have now.)
  4. The venues in the final round would rotate in order every few years.

Option 5: Revert to the classic full-season points structure

To be clear: There is no way NASCAR will ever go back to the classic 36-race cumulative points system, and there’s not really any evidence that it would help in the first place or that it would provide season-long drama.

There are diehard fans who keep track of what the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series points would have been under the old system, and they’ll be happy to tell you that Christopher Bell would have edged Chase Elliott by five points at Phoenix, having overcome a massive 400+ point deficit in the final 12 weeks. What an incredibly exciting run that would have been!

Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way and it’s not the ’90s anymore. Drivers and teams would strategize and execute races in a completely different way if there weren’t stage points or playoff-clinching wins to chase after. If you desperately want full-season points, there’s always Formula 1 (which has produced a whopping two close championship battles that weren’t clinched multiple races ahead of time in the last nine years). – Nick Schwartz

Option 6: Keep things exactly the way they are

There is nothing wrong with the NASCAR Cup Series playoff format, and if you disagree, hear me out. I started covering NASCAR in 2017, as long as this playoff format has been around, so I don’t know anything different. But NASCAR fans do, and therein lies a huge part of the problem.

Some fans don’t like the current playoff format because they can’t let go of the belief that the most dominant driver and team throughout the season should be the champion. That’s how it worked before, and that’s what many want back. But that’s not interesting, it’s not comparable to other sports and it potentially allows the championship to be decided multiple races before the season finale.

“You can have a great regular season; it seeds you better for the playoffs, right?” Joey Logano said after winning his third title. “Now, that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to go all the way to the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup Finals or the NBA Finals. It doesn’t matter. It might help you. It’s the same way in NASCAR.”

The current playoff format works, chaos and controversies and all. It’s engaging, makes every playoff race matter and further emphasizes the importance of a strong regular season.

The regular season just isn’t everything, like pretty much every other sport. And to say a NASCAR champion’s title isn’t real if they’re not the strongest driver through all 36 races is, as Logano put it, “bull-[expletive].” – Michelle Martinelli

NASCAR world mourned the death of legendary racer Bobby Allison with tributes and stories

Bobby Allison died at the age of 86.

NASCAR legend Bobby Allison died Saturday at the age of 86, NASCAR announced in a statement. A cause of death was not mentioned, but his family in a statement noted he had been in declining health in recent years.

The former NASCAR driver was a hugely influential factor in the sport for decades as a three-time Daytona 500 winner, the fourth all-time winningest NASCAR driver with 85 checkered flags and an original member of the “Alabama Gang.”

Inducted into NASCAR’s Hall of Fame in 2011, Allison raced in the sport from 1961 until 1988 and was also the 1983 NASCAR champion.

“Bobby was the ultimate fan’s driver. He thoroughly enjoyed spending time with his fans and would stop to sign autographs and have conversations with them everywhere he went,” the Allison family said in a statement via NASCAR.

Ahead of the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship race Saturday at Phoenix Raceway, there was a moment of silence to honor Allison:

But there were many more tributes and stories shared online as news of the racing legend’s death spread.

How the NASCAR world reacted to the death of Bobby Allison

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Why Alex Bowman was disqualified from the NASCAR playoffs despite initially qualifying

Some bad news for the No. 48 car and driver for Hendrick Motorsports.

We’ve got some controversy in NASCAR with playoffs continuing.

Alex Bowman drives the No. 48 car for Hendrick Motorsports, and he finished 18th in Sunday’s Cup Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and he was No. 8, all set to advance in the Round of 8 playoffs. He was all set to move forward … but then he was disqualified. What happened?

Here’s the answer: his car failed the post-race inspection given that it was too light.

“Unfortunately, the 48 had an issue (and) did not meet minimum weight,” NASCAR Cup Series managing director Brad Moran said, via NASCAR.com. “We put the car to the side. We continued on. We … gave them the opportunity to fuel the car as well as purge the water system and add water. So we gave them every opportunity to make minimum weight. We ran them back through. Unfortunately, they were light again. They are allowed a 0.5% weight break, which is for usage of fluids and so on. That’s about 17 pounds.”

All hope isn’t lost yet. If there’s an appeal — Hendrick Motorsports said they would submit one — then Bowman could come back if there’s a reversal.

But for now, Joey Logano advanced.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s wild return to NASCAR ends with top-10 finish and 2 a.m. beers on pit road

Dale Jr. couldn’t see his dash but finished seventh anyways at Bristol in his first NASCAR race in nearly a year.

For the first time in nearly a year, one of the most popular drivers in the history of motorsports was back in the driver’s seat for a NASCAR Xfinity Series race on Friday night at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. jumped behind the wheel of the No. 88 Hellman’s Mayonnaise Chevrolet Camaro as part of a deal with the sponsor. Essentially, Earnhardt runs this race in the Hellman’s car and then the company sponsors other drivers on Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports team throughout the season. Junior retired from racing full-time after the 2017 Cup Series season, but the 49-year-old still likes to jump behind the wheel in a Xfinity race or two each year in addition to some on-and-off racing in the late model CARS Tour.

But impressively, despite a chaotic and wild night, Earnhardt finished seventh in his return to one of the highest tiers of NASCAR.

And he did that battling a flurry of problems, errors, fumbles and issues at the Food City 300.

His radio went out. He replaced his helmet. He replaced his wiring harness. He lost his glasses. His radio fell on the floor. His water bottle fell on the floor. He couldn’t read the numbers on the dash. The radio volume turned up way too loud. He ran part of the race without a spotter.

On and on and on.

Just about everything that could go wrong for Dale Jr. did. And he still finished in the top-10 in his first Xfinity race since last October.

After losing his glasses early in the race, Earnhardt just did the rest of the race without them.

“I just can’t see the dash, can’t read like the little numbers. They were like, ‘how hot is it?’ And I’m like, ‘It’s 200-something.’ I can see out the windshield just fine.”

After the race, which marked Dale Jr.’s 356th top-10 finish of his career, he celebrated the way everyone expected him to, with beers on pit road with friends and fellow drivers long into the night.

According to NASCAR, Earnhardt currently holds the longest active streak of consecutive seasons with at least one national series start. The 1998 and 1999 Xfinity champion currently doesn’t have a deal in place to race at Bristol next year, but he hasn’t ruled out a return to the series for 2025 or 2026.

“I’m not planning on racing next year, (but) I’d be foolish to say I’m never going to run again because I don’t know well enough to stay away from it, and I’ll probably miss it next year and be absolutely willing to sign up for anything that might be beneficial to JR Motorsports,” Earnhardt said. “Right now, I don’t have any plans, but that’s the way I like it.”

In the meantime, fans will have to catch Dale Jr. in the broadcast booth, on his podcast or on the CARS Tour.

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IndyCar crowns a champion: How to watch the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix

A champion will be crowned in IndyCar’s final race of 2024, the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix.

IndyCar will crown a champion on Sunday, September 15th at Nashville Superspeedway, with series leader Alex Palou seeking his second consecutive championship.

Palou, who won the NTT INDYCAR SERIES title in 2021 and 2023, will start the race with a 33-point advantage over his main rival, Team Penske’s Will Power. Scott McLaughlin, 50 points behind Palou, is still mathematically eligible if Palou for some reason does not start the race.

The 2024 finale was initially set to be held on a revamped street circuit in Nashville, but due to a lack of space caused by construction on a new Titans stadium, the race was moved to Nashville Superspeedway – giving fans a thrilling season finale on an oval for the first time since 2014.

Here’s all you need to know about Sunday’s IndyCar finale:

Sunday, September 15th: Big Machine Music City Grand Prix

The Big Machine Music City Grand Prix will begin at 3:00 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock.

2024 NTT INDYCAR Series POINTS STANDINGS:

1st: Alex Palou, 525 points

2nd: Will Power, 492 points

3rd: Scott McLaughlin, 475 points

4th: Colton Herta, 462 points

5th: Scott Dixon, 443 points

6th: Pato O’Ward, 419 points

7th: Kyle Kirkwood, 384 points

8th: Josef Newgarden, 365 points

9th: Alexander Rossi, 350 points

10th: Santino Ferruci, 339 points

Denny Hamlin had the perfect self-deprecating joke about it being ‘his year’ to win a NASCAR championship

Denny Hamlin’s got jokes.

Is this the year Denny Hamlin finally breaks through and wins his first NASCAR Cup Series champion? Probably best not to ask him that because he’s definitely tired of hearing it.

In fact, the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver even made a joke about it at NASCAR playoffs media day Wednesday.

Hamlin has been racing full-time at NASCAR’s highest level for 19 seasons and has an impressive three Daytona 500 checkered flags on his resume. His 54 career wins have him in a two-way tie for 12th-most in NASCAR history, and he has three wins so far this season at Bristol Motor Speedway, Richmond Raceway and Dover Motor Speedway.

He’s one of the best, most versatile and decorated NASCAR drivers of all time, but he’s never been a Cup Series champion. He’s also well aware of that, and in case he forgets, NASCAR reporters often like to ask if this is his year ahead of the playoffs.

In 2019, For The Win even wrote an in-depth feature about Hamlin’s standout season, headlined: “Denny Hamlin is the best active NASCAR driver without a title. Is this his year?” (It was not.)

Mocking himself and everyone else, Hamlin had the perfect joke about 2024 being his year. He had a sign taped to his back at playoff media day with a simple message:

“Please don’t ask him if it’s his year.

It’s always ‘his year’

Maybe this is finally the year for Hamlin. Maybe he still has to wait and keep racing to be a NASCAR champion. Maybe he ultimately ends his illustrious career as the most decorated driver to never win a title. Maybe he’s at peace with it all regardless.

But at least he’s making very good jokes about it.

The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs begin Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway with the Quaker State 400 (3 p.m. ET, USA Network). Hamlin enters ranked sixth in the standings and 10 points ahead of the cutoff when four of the 16 drivers will be eliminated after the first three playoff races.

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Bubba Wallace shared Michael Jordan’s advice ahead of his last chance to make NASCAR playoffs

Bubba Wallace shared what team owner MJ told him and how it’s helped his approach to Darlington.

The NASCAR Cup Series regular season all comes down to Sunday at Darlington Raceway, where drivers not already qualified for the playoffs will have one last opportunity to contend for a title this season.

The top-16 drivers in the standings make the playoffs, and they’re automatically guaranteed a berth with a win during the regular season. If they don’t win a regular-season race and there are fewer than 16 different winners, the remaining playoff spots are filled based on who’s where in the standings.

With one more race to go before the 10-race playoffs, Bubba Wallace and his No. 23 23XI Racing team are sitting in 13th. But with a few drivers with wins this season, the playoff picture projects him as 17th and the first driver excluded from the postseason if it started today. His sixth-place finish Saturday at Daytona International Speedway helped, but he’s not there yet.

While a guest on Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s podcast, Wallace shared his approach to his last playoff-qualifying opportunity, along with the advice he received from 23XI Racing co-owner Michael Jordan.

Wallace told Earnhardt:

“There’s two sides of it coming out of Daytona: You’re bummed. You’re pissed off. You did what you’re supposed to do. We out-raced [Ross Chastain in] the 1 car, and we have a six-point, seven-point cushion to him. But we had a new winner [with Harrison Burton], so it’s like the goalpost moved again. …

“I had MJ text me, and he says, ‘The things you want more cost more.’ All day yesterday and all day, in the middle of the night, I’m telling myself, ‘Just try to go out and have the best race you’ve ever had of your life.’ It’s just showing up, me doing all that I can. Take out the outside factors. That’s how I’m approaching it. I woke up in a much better mood this morning.”

Wallace added why he needs to emphasize de-stressing before races, saying:

“Last year, I went into Daytona really stressed out. … I think for Daytona, you can get by with that. But I think if it was Darlington, I would have crashed Lap 2. Taking a deep breath, understanding where we’re at — we’re not out of it by any means. If you out-run the guys you’re racing, then you should beat them. But we have to do a little bit extra work, and I’m excited to roll the sleeves up and do that.”

The NASCAR Cup Series’ regular-season finale is the Southern 500 on Sunday at Darlington Raceway (6 p.m. ET, USA Network).

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Jeff Burton’s overjoyed reaction to his son Harrison Burton winning his first NASCAR Cup Series race will have you tearing up

What a moment for father and son!

How about that?

Harrison Burton, racing for the Wood Brothers, and just 24 years old, won the 2024 Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona on Saturday night, giving him his first career Cup Series victory.

Here’s the coolest part: his dad, NASCAR legend Jeff Burton, was in the booth to watch his son cross the finish line first, and his reaction was a huge fist pump up there. And then, as you’ll see, he ran up to give Harrison a huge hug after the win.

Check it all out and tell me you don’t tear up at all of this. That was how I felt!

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NASCAR driver Daniel Suárez’s Daytona race car was scarily charred after bursting into flames

Daniel Suárez is OK, but that was scary!

Daniel Suárez’s night at Daytona International Speedway ended a lot earlier than he hoped after his race car burst into flames. But thankfully, the No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet driver is OK.

Not even a quarter of the way into the 160-lap Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona, Suárez’s caught fire on pit road, and at one point, the whole rear of the car was engulfed in flames. The fire was the result of exhaust from Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota coming out of the pits from directly behind the 99, according to NASCAR.

The fire obviously forced Suárez to return to pit road, and after just 37 laps, the Trackhouse Racing driver’s race was over. There’s no real way to carry on racing when your car is this charred and damaged — even though Suárez definitely wanted to.

Here’s a look at what happened during both of Suárez’s pit stops. Definitely a scary moment.

Again, Suárez is thankfully OK, and he explained what happened from his perspective.

He said he could see the smoke and feel the heat, but he couldn’t see the fire. He didn’t know how big it was and initially hoped he could stay in the car during repairs.

He told reporters afterward:

“Every single time that we do pit stops, we drop a little fuel; that’s completely normal. Unfortunately, when [Hamlin] was leaving, he stopped right behind me because he was waiting for me to leave. And his exhaust fired up the little fuel I dropped and as I was still parked there, that [got] into the back of my car where the fuel cell is. …

“Really unfortunate situation, to be honest. Honestly I don’t know what we could have done different, but just a little bit sad that we’re out of the race this way so early. But I’m glad I’m fine and the entire team was fine.”

DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA – AUGUST 24: Daniel Suarez, driver of the #99 Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Chevrolet, pits with flames during the NASCAR Cup Series Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway on August 24, 2024 in Daytona Beach, Florida. (Photo by Logan Riely/Getty Images)

Suárez added: “I was fine. I wanted to keep running.” Then, he realized the magnitude of the damage after seeing the top of the car on fire.

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