The return of The Chase for the Championship has instantly been pitched to NASCAR followers as a return to civility.
This in fact doesn’t imply a lack of depth or consequence however those that had been a part of the announcement on Monday at NASCAR Productions consider that factors racing will lead to a product that is a bit more skilled.
And within the course of, everybody concerned in the end believes that is the important thing to successful again lapsed followers.
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Chase Elliott, for instance, believes that the playoff format used from 2014 to 2025 emphasised the mistaken parts of Cup Sequence competitors. The 2020 champion says The Playoffs created headlines and social media snippets for the mistaken causes.
He pointed to the emphasis on final lap dive bombs and crashing different drivers to get the purpose wanted to advance into the subsequent spherical.
“Like all that stuff is nice to your retweets and will get a number of clicks and that is implausible for y’all,” mentioned Elliott to media in attendance after the announcement. “However on the finish of the day, I feel to your long-term integrity of what we do and what the game is absolutely about, what it was constructed on, the artwork behind passing and finesse, the issues that separate a man from being good to being nice will not be the final lap maneuvers we now have seen.”
Elliott pointed to the 2022 playoff race at Martinsville the place Ross Chastain full-throttled in opposition to the wall within the now banned ‘Hail Melon’ to move half a dozen vehicles and eradicate Denny Hamlin from the championship race.
“We at all times speak about how laborious it’s to move, and the way necessary observe place is, so on and so forth,” Elliott mentioned. “I watched Denny drive from about 4 vehicles again from me. I used to be operating seventh or eighth. He drove up and handed me, didn’t boot anybody out of the best way, nothing loopy.”
Elliott mentioned Hamlin put himself in place to advance ‘the fitting approach’ nevertheless it was undone by Chastain, and he had an issue with that, even when it wasn’t private.
“I am similar to, ‘man, we’re speaking in regards to the mistaken factor right here,’ since you don’t understand how laborious it’s to do what Denny did to get himself in that place,” Elliott mentioned. “As a substitute, we’re selling the craziness as a result of it bought us on SportsCenter that evening and I simply thought it was all mistaken.
“So my level in all of that’s it is a nice step to not have as many of those chaotic moments and all of us (drivers) realizing there’s sufficient time for this to come back out with the wash.”
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To his level, the loudest advocate for a season lengthy championship or a minimum of a factors racing format was Mark Martin, who mentioned the craziness was not producing development within the fanbase.
So what was the purpose?
“The entire thought of the playoffs was to carry extra of these followers and it has failed,” Martin mentioned. “It didn’t herald sufficient of these followers in to offset what we misplaced. The traditional race followers, many give up watching, and Jeff Burton says we are able to’t get them again.
“He could also be proper however possibly we are able to get a few of them again. I hope we are able to get sufficient of them again to a minimum of offset those that had been watching only for the sparks and the flames as a result of it’s racing.
“If we are able to get fathers watching races with their children, or grandfathers and their grandkids, that’s how we domesticate new followers. We don’t need to essentially exit and alter our on-track product as they name it. Let’s be who we’re.”
Which means points-based racing — even a model of it that has a single reset after the twenty sixth race of the season with a 10-race runway to in the end decide the champion.
Ryan Blaney, the 2023 champion, echoed the sentiment that it will clear up the racing in additive methods.
“I really feel prefer it additionally goes to — I sit again, and I take a look at this new format, and generally all of us get grief about over aggressiveness and issues like that, and generally you get put in these conditions the place it is a win and transfer on sort state of affairs,” Blaney mentioned. “I feel it is going to clear up a number of the racing facet of it and get again to the purity facet of it to the place it’s a little bit extra of not brash, a bit of bit extra of the attractive artwork type that I grew up loving.”
Like his fellow Corridor of Famer, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is a full season factors purist but additionally shares Martin’s sentiment that it is a compromise that’s a minimum of comparable with the spirit of NASCAR.
He says NASCAR spent too lengthy chasing after stick-and-ball followers.
“Individuals both love motorsports or they don’t,” Earnhardt mentioned. “I don’t know that we have to attempt to purchase all these options from different sports activities to draw them to what we do.
“I feel that’s simply losing our time attempting to achieve a fan that doesn’t exist and the numbers would say that. I’m not an knowledgeable on the demographics and find out how to develop our viewers however I do know that what we’ve been attempting to do to liken ourselves in direction of these different issues haven’t helped.
“It is not made an enormous distinction. Motorsports is exclusive, proper? We’re distinctive in that how we settle the rating and settle the season is totally different. We don’t must undertake these different issues on the market on the planet. We had a reasonably good system.”
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With that mentioned, the Chase for the Championship is inherently a playoff format, however one which honors the NASCAR custom of factors racing. And once more, it’s going to emphasise racing over crashing over the ultimate 10 weeks of the season.
Chase Briscoe echoed the phrases of his friends.
“You’re not going to see the man in twenty third driving by means of the man in twenty second coming to the checkered flag,” Briscoe mentioned. “Each level goes to matter, actually, however we’re not going to have that cutoff race the place guys are going to be doing loopy stuff to complete seventeenth or no matter.
“Racing for the win, guys are going to be a bit of bit smarter and since the factors pay extra for a win now, successful remains to be an enormous incentive. It’s 15 extra factors.”
The O’Reilly Auto Elements and Craftsman Truck Sequence divisions can even undertake the Chase for the Championship for the primary time and everybody concerned hopes higher habits are developed there now after a decade of demolition derby fashion racing over the course of a number of years.
“You’re not going to scrub somebody out for 14th,” Briscoe mentioned. “You gained’t have that anymore. Possibly after we get to the twenty sixth race, and somebody actually wants that time, possibly however you’re not going to see guys clear one another out a number of occasions a 12 months or journey the wall at Martinsville.”
One other factor everybody within the room appeared to agree with, and disagreed with NASCAR’s final conclusion, was that 16 contenders was too many for a format that beforehand featured 10 after which 12.
However Elliott once more cited this format as a compromise.
“I assumed 10 was a extremely good quantity again within the day, simply because it was actually laborious to get contained in the top-10,” Elliott mentioned. “It isn’t as laborious to get into sixteenth, however Mark mentioned it completely.
“It is a compromise. You aren’t going to get every thing you need. I do suppose this was an incredible piece of center floor for us to land in and have everybody be as glad as they are often. Hopefully now, we are able to deal with what issues probably the most.”
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