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By Saajan Jogia
Sports Contributing Writer
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NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell has confirmed that the sport will shift to a new playoff format in the future, details of which will be announced after the 2025 season. The current format has received much criticism from several drivers and ex-champions, who called for urgent changes to be made to the playoffs.
NASCAR set up the playoff committee with insiders and industry experts to suggest potential playoff format changes. Most individuals favored going back to the full season format, which was in place until the 2004 season. However, it remains unclear if that direction has been decided for the future.
With major playoff changes on the horizon, O'Donnell emphasized that he will support the 2025 champion by announcing after the current season has concluded. Speaking to Dale Earnhardt Jr on the Dale Jr. Download, he said:
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"We got rules in place for this year. What I don't want to do is take away from whoever wins the championship this year. Those were the rules. Everybody knew them. Let's go race, and whoever wins that championship, I'm going to stand behind that driver and team and say that's our champion."
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O'Donnell revealed a conversation with Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell, which prompted him to rethink the current format, where the final round race decides the championship, regardless of the number of wins that driver secured. Notably, Bell is in favor of the full-season format. The NASCAR President said:
"So what gets me to think about it is Christopher Bell. The guy who will come in and have a conversation with me behind closed doors, doesn't go out and tweet about everything and say, 'hey, here's what I think. Here's what.' He just gives me an honest opinion, which I agree with, of, 'hey, man, if I roll off 10 wins in a year, and I go to one race and couple other guys get into me or whatever, I'm not the champion.' Four years in a row, that happens.
"I don't want the next Christopher Bell, who is ten years old right now, thinking about NASCAR, wanting to go to NASCAR, wanting to be a champion, and say, 'huh, this is a little bit more of a chance on a one race, right?' And I also look at it like Christopher Bell, to me, is a superstar in our sport. You roll off four championships in a row with eight wins and a body of work, whatever that may be, that's good for our sport. People are talking about him."
O'Donnell stressed that he likes some aspects of racing that have changed over the years, hinting that the new playoff format could have a unique element to it, and urged drivers to accept the change that will come their way. He added:
"I think about how big that race is, and one of the narrative is, oh, he's in the playoffs. Man, it's the Daytona 500. Yes, he's in the playoffs. I like that you have to win. Nobody can question -- I will argue 'till I'm blue in the face that the racing has changed in terms of, if you got to win the race, some racing has changed. So there's some of that element I don't want to go away.
"And then just looking at future stars, drivers coming in, having a multitude of races potentially that you gotta put a body of work together. So I think about all those things. I'm not giving away where I'm at, but I completely recognize where we're at today. I also recognize that a number of folks that are out there pretty vocally were part of this, right? And everybody said, 'hey, here's what we're going to do.' Everybody signed up for that.
"So, I think all I would want is wherever we go, we're going to communicate that, but we need the industry to buy in. The biggest thing is we need the drivers to feel like whatever is in place, I have the shot, and we can start questioning, if something happens, maybe look in the mirror, versus maybe something happened in a one race scenario. That's where I'm at."
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