Better late than never.
It’s no secret that things aren’t exactly going great for NASCAR right now. One look at the ratings will show you just how far the sport has fallen: This year, television ratings for the NASCAR Cup Series are down 15% from where they were last year, with only a handful of races outperforming their viewership numbers from last year.
While some of that can be attributed to changes in the television package, which moved some races off of network channels and onto cable channels like USA or FS1, as well as the 5 races that were streamed on Amazon Prime this summer, it’s still an alarming number.
There’s also been a lot of criticism of NASCAR this season surrounding the race package for the Cup Series cars, especially at short tracks and road courses. The traditionally exciting races at tracks like Bristol, Martinsville and even Darlington have turned into snoozefests, with drivers finding it nearly impossible to pass each other.
Then of course there’s the heated debate surrounding NASCAR’s playoff format, which seems to have reached a fever pitch in recent weeks.
NASCAR first adopted a postseason points format back in 2004 when it unveiled the “Chase for the Nextel Cup.” Previously, the series had simply awarded points based on finishing position and whoever had the most points at the end of the season was a championship. Simple enough, right?
But back in 2003, NASCAR Cup Series champion Matt Kenseth stunk up the show. He dominated the points standings despite only winning one race the entire season, and was so far ahead before the final race of the season that he had already locked up the championship – making the season finale essentially meaningless.
In an attempt to boost ratings at the end of the season when NASCAR was competing with the NFL for viewers, they’ve since gone to some sort of a playoff system, though the format has changed over the years.
Under the current system, which was largely implemented in 2014, a driver can lock themselves into the playoffs with a win during the first 26 races, regardless of where they are in the points standings. The thought was that it would incentivize drivers to race hard to compete for a win each week, but there’s one obvious problem: If a driver who was well below the cut line somehow manages to sneak out a win, they take a spot in the playoffs away from a driver and team who performed better throughout the season.
The current system also results in a lot of “manufactured drama” rather than simply rewarding the best finishing drivers, like this past weekend at the Charlotte Roval when Joey Logano and Ross Chastain were battling for the final spot in the round of 8…while racing for 20th position on the track.
Of course NASCAR has fallen quite a bit from its heyday back in the early 2000s, when the sport was at its peak of popularity. The problem is that after growing so much, NASCAR made changes that seemed to abandon its roots in an attempt to attract even more fans from outside of its traditional audience. Tracks like Darlington and Richmond had dates stripped from them that were replaced with races in cities like Las Vegas and California, and a lot of the short tracks in the southern United States have disappeared from the schedule altogether.
The thinking, obviously, was that NASCAR wanted a presence in the larger television markets where there are more potential fans.
The problem, though, is that it alienated their existing fans while failing to replace them with new viewers from those larger markets.
Well it sounds like NASCAR finally realized their problem, and have committed to working to reverse some of the bad decisions they’ve made over the past couple of years (actually it’s been more like the past two decades).
During a surprisingly honest conversation with Dale Earnhardt Jr. on his podcast, The Dale Jr. Download, NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell admitted that they made a mistake when they abandoned their roots and alienated their base:
“If we had some things to do over again… We were just, ‘We’re going to Vegas. We’re going to California. We’re going to Texas.’ And the way we did that was not the right way. We left people feeling deserted, so one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over my time here is, we can go to San Diego and we can try something, but you better be at Bowman Gray. You better also be mixing and matching with what you’re doing.”
And he said the sport is currently focused on getting back to its roots:
“Over the last couple of years we’ve maybe gone a bit of a different route, trying to be all things to all people. That’s not us… We got a little bit trying to be all things to all people, a little too defensive. At the end of the day, we gotta go have fun.”
O’Donnell discussed taking a look at some of the tracks NASCAR had raced at previously to see if they could be revitalized to host races, as well as other events in the future. But one of the big changes, at least in the short term, is that NASCAR will be working to improve the racing on the track by doing something drivers and fans have been asking for for a long time: More horsepower.
Starting next year, NASCAR will increase the horsepower of the Cup Series cars from 670 hp to 750 hp at all road courses and short tracks that are shorter than 1.5 miles, which includes tracks like Darlington, Martinsville, Richmond, Bristol, Phoenix, Nashville, Gateway, Iowa and Loudon.
As far as the playoffs, O’Donnell says that no changes will be announced before the end of the 2025 season, but if the reports we’ve heard the past few weeks are true it sounds like there’s less and less resistance from the decisionmakers in the sport to going back to a 36-race points system and eliminating the playoffs altogether.
Overall it’s nice to see NASCAR actually listening to fans – the fans who are already watching, not potential fans that you’re trying to attract.
I’ve been a NASCAR fan since 2001. It’s rare that I miss watching a race, and I want to see the sport do well and become as popular as it was back in the early 2000s. That’s fun for everybody, from fans to drivers and of course for NASCAR itself.
It seems like they’re finally moving in the right direction after years of dismissing concerns from fans. Is it too little, too late? We’ll see I guess, but it’s better than going in the direction they were headed.
