A former NASCAR Cup Series crew chief has revealed his ideal playoff format for 2025. Check out this former NASCAR crew chief’s suggestion!
The 2024 NASCAR offseason is underway, and the playoff format is at the center of conversations around the industry. NASCAR is planning to review the playoff format and could make changes as soon as 2025. If necessary, a more extensive overhaul would likely have to wait until 2026. However, one former NASCAR Cup Series crew chief has an idea for the perfect playoff format.
[autotag]Cole Pearn[/autotag], who served as Martin Truex Jr.’s championship-winning crew chief in 2017, believes a year-long point standings would be beneficial for the current playoff system. The top 16 drivers in the point standings make the playoffs, and if there is a winner in a round, they will advance. Then, the remaining spots are filled in by the top drivers in the year-long standings.
Go off YTD point standings all year, top 16 get in playoffs. If you win in a round you advance, the remaining spots are filled by the YTD point standings that are being added to with each playoff race. Very high chance the best cars all make the last race, winner take all.
This would allow the best drivers in the series to make the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway. In 2024, Kyle Larson would’ve made the Championship 4 over William Byron. Granted, the drivers and teams would race differently under a different format. NASCAR needs to make some adjustments to the playoffs, and it will be interesting to see what happens moving forward.
Martin Truex Jr.’s crew chief, one of the best in NASCAR, is walking away.
In a move that shocked the NASCAR world, Martin Truex Jr.’s crew chief, Cole Pearn, is walking away from NASCAR, Joe Gibbs Racing announced Monday.
Pearn is one of the best crew chiefs in the business, and his chemistry with Truex is undeniable, as the pair won the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series championship and have competed in the title race in four of their five years as a team. They also won a series high of seven races in 2019.
For 37-year-old Pearn, the decision is the latest example of how grueling NASCAR’s 36-race schedule (plus two exhibition events) is for those on the road every week. It was a difficult decision, but it had an obvious answer, he explained on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Monday.
“I really planned on doing this at least a couple more years longer than just this year, but things change and your perspective changes,” Pearn said. “I think when we sat down as a family and figured out a way we could make it work, it was just a question of, ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’
“When you look back on your life, it was a choice between having years as a family or trying to get more trophies. And when you looked at it that way, it was just, the decision became a lot clearer.”
— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) December 10, 2019
Pearn and Truex started together with Furniture Row Racing, what was once NASCAR’s only Denver-based team. But after sponsor 5-hour ENERGY left the sport at the end of the 2018 season, the team folded, and Pearn and Truex moved to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2019.
For the third straight year, they were among the Championship 4 contenders. But the No. 19 Toyota team made a rare and costly mistake during the championship race by accidentally switching the left and right tires during a pit stop. Truex was able to recover a bit on the track, but that likely cost him a second title.
“Our friendship is what matters most to me and I’m happy that he’s doing what’s best for him and his family,” Truex said in the team statement about Pearn leaving NASCAR.
Although Pearn acknowledged everyone in the sport knows what they’re getting into with the February-to-November schedule, but it was starting to take a toll on him.
He said if the season was 20 races and not 38, he’d “probably” still be a crew chief. But he added that this decision was “a long time coming.”
Cheers to 6 years of good times & lots of memories with this guy. Wish him nothing but the best in the future. Love ya man. @colepearnpic.twitter.com/n5Evv908h4
And his rationale for leaving NASCAR echos that of several other people who have or are about to call it quits, including seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson, who will retire after the 2020 season, and Paul Menard, who retired at the end of the 2019 season.
Pearn explained he wasn’t ready to leave NASCAR after Furniture Row Racing closed up shop last year, but he realized he’s missing his children grow up.
“Everybody that works in the sport understands the grind of what the schedule is, and to do it at the top level, you gotta be all the way in,” Pearn said to SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “I was somehow making it work I think with our family before my kids got in school. And then once they’re in school and you’ve got a day off on a Thursday, it doesn’t really matter. You pretty much go all week and you barely see them, and I didn’t want to look back on my life and miss those moments.
“For me to get the opportunity to work in racing has just been a dream come true, and then to have the success we’ve had just blows my mind. I feel like from that standpoint, when you achieve more than you’ve ever dreamt, you look at the other things in your life that you’re missing. And yeah, it just felt like it was time.”
Pearn and Truex after winning the championship in 2017. (Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports)
He continued:
“I’ve got a seven and a five year old, and I’m pretty sure when they’re teenagers, they’re not going to want anything to do with me. So if I actually want to enjoy the years where they think I’m cool, I need to do it now.”
Pearn is Canadian and said he and his family plan to relocate back to the mountains in western Canada, and he’s “stoked about it.”
He also said he offered Joe Gibbs Racing a recommendation for his replacement.
“I definitely gave them my two cents on who I thought it should be. I think it’s probably the same thing as what they were thinking. … I know from my standpoint, I’m going to be the biggest 19 cheerleader there is and do whatever I can to help support them from the sideline.”
