I\u2019m in the latter camp<\/a>.<\/p>\nBy and large, however, drivers overwhelmingly reside in the former. Their reasons why vary.<\/p>\n
NASCAR Playoffs – Competition<\/h3>\n Some note its effect on the competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to do everything perfect and you\u2019ve got to showcase that,\u201d Austin Cindric<\/strong> said.<\/p>\n\u201cYou have to go out there and perform each and every week within what it takes to advance,\u201d Kurt Busch<\/strong> said.<\/p>\n\u201cI think it\u2019s a good way to make sure that everybody keeps performing all the way until the last race is over,\u201d Ricky Stenhouse Jr.<\/strong> said.<\/p>\nStick and ball sports<\/h3>\n Other drivers point to how in the stick and ball sports leagues, the best team(s) doesn\u2019t always make it to the championship game.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can go 15-1 or 16-0 in the regular season in the NFL and not make it to the Super Bowl,\u201d Aric Almirola<\/strong> said. \u201cYou can have the best record in baseball and not make it to the World Series.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cIf you look at the Chiefs, (they) very well could have lost to the Browns and had the best regular season and they\u2019re done in one game,\u201d Stenhouse said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, if you want to compare NASCAR to other sports, NFL, basketball, that playoff system, it’s not necessarily the team that’s the hottest throughout the regular season,\u201d Austin Dillon<\/strong> said. \u201cIt’s the team that gets hot when it matters.\u201d<\/p>\nWhich is precisely what happened in 2020.<\/p>\n
Let’s do the time warp again<\/h3>\nMARTINSVILLE, Va. – November 1: Kevin Harvick, driver of the #4 Mobil 1 Ford, drives with sparks after an on-track incident on the last lap of the NASCAR Cup Series Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway on Nov. 1, 2020, in Martinsville, Virginia. Photo: Brian Lawdermilk\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhile Kevin Harvick<\/strong> and Denny Hamlin<\/strong> racked up wins, Chase Elliott<\/strong> lurked behind the bushes, thanks to consistent top-10 finishes in the playoffs and stage finishes that mitigated the points loss from subpar finishes.<\/p>\nGiven that he never dipped below seventh in points, you\u2019d be hard-pressed to argue he wasn\u2019t one of the four best drivers last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you still see the best guys in the final four the majority of the time,\u201d Erik Jones<\/strong> said.<\/p>\nThe championship race gives NASCAR the \u201cGame 7 moments\u201d it wanted with this format.<\/p>\nAVONDALE, Ariz. – NOVEMBER 7: Justin Allgaier, driver of the #7 BRANDT Chevrolet, and Austin Cindric, driver of the #22 Menards\/Richmond Ford, lead the field during the NASCAR Xfinity Series Desert Diamond Casino West Valley 200 at Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 7, 2020, in Avondale, Arizona. Photo: Brian Lawdermilk\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCase in point, Cindric restarted third in overtime of the XFINITY Series championship race at Phoenix Raceway back in November. Coming down the backstretch on the restart, he\u2019s boxed in by Justin Allgaier<\/strong> and Noah Gragson<\/strong>. After they sandwiched him coming to the white flag, he raced side-by-side with Gragson all the way to Turn 3, before he powered by him to win the race and championship.<\/p>\nIn that regard, it works as advertised.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing down to one race makes it a little bit more of a wildcard than what it was in the past; even more so than what the traditional Playoffs system was with points over ten races,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
Other points on the NASCAR Playoffs<\/h3>\n While I\u2019ve argued that making the championship race and winning the title are now more weighted on luck, Joey Logano<\/strong> contests this.<\/p>\n\u201cTo me, there\u2019s no such thing as luck,\u201d he said. \u201cRoger Penske says it the best, \u2018The harder I work, the luckier I get.\u2019 That\u2019s just what it is. You\u2019ve got to be good when it matters the most and that\u2019s what playoff sports are about.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, as BJ McLeod<\/strong> noted, the many changes to the playoff format since its inception in 2004 demonstrates NASCAR\u2019s willingness to adapt and change, at least when it comes to the playoffs.<\/p>\n\u201cYou\u2019ve seen a lot of open-mindedness from their side and the things that they\u2019ve worked on,\u201d he said. \u201cThey really want to make the fans happy and you have to accept if you\u2019re a fan that you can\u2019t argue that point right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
NASCAR Playoffs – In conclusion<\/h3>\n Ultimately, the playoffs are the status quo and NASCAR\u2019s shown no indication that that\u2019s changing anytime soon. Drivers and teams have accepted the system and all of its positives and negatives, including how exponentially more difficult it\u2019s made winning a championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, this is the challenge we are faced with and you\u2019ve got to make the best of it,\u201d Martin Truex Jr.<\/strong> said. \u201cAt the end of the day, the best team wins, no matter how they get there.<\/p>\n\u201cThis is a difficult sport. It\u2019s hard to win a single race, let alone, one out of three in each round. I think we know what we are getting involved with.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the rules we have,\u201d Ross Chastain<\/strong> said. \u201cWe all know it and we all plan accordingly. Whatever series you\u2019re in as a racer, you\u2019re going to examine the rule book and find the gray areas on the car and on the driving and what\u2019s acceptable. So it\u2019s no different with the points. We know we have to.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cSometimes the guy that dominated the season has a bad Playoff run in a certain round like you saw last year, but that\u2019s just part of racing,\u201d Alex Bowman<\/strong> said. \u201cRacing has always been that way and stuff happens.\u201d<\/p>\nAs the old saying goes, it is what it is.<\/p>\n
TOP IMAGE: Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another season brings more talk about the NASCAR Playoffs, their eternal albatross. I asked multiple NASCAR drivers about their thoughts on it. Freshly wrapped cars loaded into equally wrapped haulers depart their respective home bases around Charlotte, North Carolina, and head south to the \u201cworld center of racing.\u201d Some with new drivers. Others with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":8808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,1664],"tags":[107,564,1453,316,243,242,353,159,14,1434,371,270,563,1143],"class_list":["post-8807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nascar","category-nascar-cup-series","tag-alex-bowman","tag-aric-almirola","tag-austin-cindric","tag-austin-dillon","tag-erik-jones","tag-joey-logano","tag-kurt-busch","tag-martin-truex-jr","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-2021","tag-nascar-cup-series","tag-nascar-playoffs","tag-ricky-stenhouse-jr","tag-ross-chastain"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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