If I Ran NASCAR

While we’re waiting for NASCAR to announce a possibly new format for the 2026 championship, here’s what I would change if I ran NASCAR.

Fewer Spec Parts

If I ran NASCAR, I would put some innovation back into the hands of the teams.

• Leave the chassis and bodies as spec for safety and cost reasons.
• At a minimum, teams should have open shocks, springs and anti-roll bar choices.
• Give teams a choice of gear ratios for the transaxle.

More Practice

‘Run what you brung’ doesn’t level the playing field. It introduces randomness and puts teams without high-level manufacturer support at a real disadvantage because they have less access to simulator time and engineering tools.

There is an art to dialing in a car at the track. Success depends on the driver’s ability to describe the car’s behavior and the crew chief’s smarts. Reward the teams that can do it.

Also, if you’re going to give teams the opportunity to experiment with parts and pieces, you have to give them time to evaluate those changes on track.

• I’ve already argued why practices need to be 50 minutes with all cars on track. That’s a minimum I hope to actually see when NASCAR announces the new rules.
• I’d add a 20-minute free-practice session immediately before qualifying. Teams happy with their set ups from the long practice wouldn’t need to chance damage. Those that were way off have the opportunity to test changes. No one gets to make changes between this mini-practice and qualifying.
• I’m leaning toward practices before drafting races to give teams a chance to shake out their cars. The last thing a series should want is for a top driver to be uncompetitive because someone forgot to tighten a screw. I’ve shown that very few cars are damaged during practices for drafting tracks. The exception is the Daytona 500, where a lot of cars are killed during the Duels.

Stewards Council

Inexperienced and/or reckless drivers caused entirely too many cautions last year. Some of these teams have nothing on the line. Their probability of winning is vanishingly low. Some seem inept. Some newer drivers act like toddlers pushing the limits to see where they are.

I am in no way suggesting punishing drivers for aggressiveness. Aggressiveness while racing is fair, especially at the end of the race. But you can’t just wreck people (or yourself) and change the outcome of the race. Few, if any, drivers would be parked. I would hope getting such a sanction might make the driver think twice before he attempts a stupid move.

We hear the argument that drivers should police each other. That isn’t working very well. Heck, we’ve got one team doing all it can to keep one of their drivers from wrecking their other drivers.

• I’d institute a point system for drivers where two egregious (or the equivalent number of less egregious) infractions sat them out for a race.
• I’m thinking three-two-one points for three levels of race-affecting incidents, but the stewards council could assess more points if safety is involved. The Carson Hocevar incident at Kansas where he revved the engine and pulled away as safety workers were all around the car should result in a suspension for a race. Safety workers cannot do their jobs if they’re worried about what a driver might do.
• Create a stewards council made up of former drivers, none of whom can have a conflict of interest. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. couldn’t do it because his company enters drivers in Cup Series Races. Jeff Burton could do it as long as son Harrison stays in O’Reilly Auto Parts NASCAR Series. Kevin Harvick could be involved until/if son Keelan makes it to Cup. Greg Biffle. Mark Martin. You get the idea.
• I don’t expect this council to actually do much. It’s just a reminder there that you only get to be stupid on track so many times.

No Four-Car Organizations/Two Charters Per Organization

Over say, the next six years, reduce charters to two per team. Any team can run a third car, but it runs as an open car. No four-car teams. What NASCAR needs most right now is to have as many competitive teams as possible — and not just teams that are competitive only at superspeedways or road courses.

If NASCAR can attract two more manufacturers, they can buy the excess charters and have the opportunity to attract some really good drivers.

Point Systems and Playoffs

This is the tough one. Accomplished mathematicians have attempted to solve this problem for F1 races. They haven’t come up with anything definitive except this: The more races you have in a season, the more likely it is that someone will clinch the championship before the final race.

That argues against a 36-race cumulative championship and for some type of playoff.

To me, the weakest link in the current system is resetting the points at the start of each round. So at a minimum, I would prohibit resets in the playoff structure. It’s ridiculous for someone to perform brilliantly in the first round, only to be re-seeded back to 10th for the start of the second round. That change by itself might be enough to fix a lot of what people complain about most.

Eligibility for the Championship

If I ran NASCAR, here’s how I would change the process by which drivers qualified for the Championship.

• I might be talked out of this by arguments about television ratings, and publicity; however, I’m inclined to limit the number of eligible drivers to 12. It’s been a very long time since someone seeded 13-16 entering the playoffs made it to the Championship 4.
• The current eligibility rules were a problem from the start. Drivers who won at drafting tracks but were overall mediocre (or poor) performers took playoff spots away from drivers far up in the point standings. The road-course-only or drafting-track-only single winners rarely made it to the Round of 8.
• Now that road course, street course and drafting tracks take up a full third of the schedule (on average), there are too many opportunities for drivers who don’t belong in the playoffs to make it in.
• I would require:
  • Drivers with one win must be in the top 20 to be eligible for the playoffs.
  • Drivers with two or more wins must be in the top 25 to be eligible.
  • After all eligible winning drivers are seeded, fill the rest of the spots (whether 12 or 16) points. This year, Chris Buescher deserved a shot at the playoffs more than Austin Dillon did.
• Is this too complicated? No. It is not. Most reasonable people are able to grasp these concepts. For the ones who can’t — or don’t want to be bothered — NASCAR provides the media with plenty of tools so they can convey the situation to fans. There has to be a balance between simplicity and fairness.

The Championship Format

I’ve saved the hardest question for last. I don’t have the perfect answer, but it’s based on a lot more solid data than most of what I’ve heard proposed.

If I ran NASCAR, I’d start by going back to non-linear points format. The Latford system (what NASCAR used before the current points system) was such a format. It recognized that it is a heck of a lot harder to win than to come in second, and orders of magnitude harder to make the top 10 than to make the top 30.

For starters:

• Get rid of playoff points. There are only only type of points from here on out.
• 10 points for each stage win
• 65 points for a win. (That’s a 25-point bonus relative to current points.
• 55 points for P2
• 50 points for P3
• 45 points for P4
• 40 points for P5
• 35 points for P6
• One fewer point for each successive position

A 10-race playoffs, with everyone starting from scratch. Most points at the end of 10 races wins. You can work eliminations in there if you want, but you have to realize that there is no way to guarantee consistent ‘game-7 moments’ without engineering the system to the point of randomness.

This comes down to a question of which is worse: someone clinching the championship early or having a champion that people spend the entire off-season arguing about whether or not he was deserving? If NASCAR gives more teams a chance to win races, contests will be closer.

So that’s my two cents on what needs to change. Feel free to disagree in the comments below, but remember to keep it civil.