NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer reiterated comments made by NASCAR President Steve Phelps that NASCAR is “open” to adjusting the playoff format.
Elton Sawyer via Noah Lewis on X
On Friday, November 8th ahead of NASCAR’s championship races Steve Phelps informed the media that the playoffs were not going anywhere, but NASCAR was open to tweaking it.
He said, “We are always looking — if there are opportunities for us to tweak something so be it. We are not the only sport where the best statistical team does not get to the final four or the Super Bowl or the World Series. The format-. There was a huge emphasis put 10 years ago when the format was put into place about winning. 3 of the 4 on Sunday, they won to get through.”
Phelps continued, “The format itself, I think, creates incredible racing. So if we are all going to be honest and say, ‘How’s the racing been during the playoffs in these nine weeks?’ I don’t think it’s been ever better. And I think part of that is due to the system itself. They race their guts out. They did. Tyler Reddick two weeks ago. Ryan Blaney last week. Chase Elliott trying to get in. Larson trying to get in. Racing their guts out. I think it provides great, great racing for our race fans.”
Steve Phelps and Steve O’Donnell via Kenny Wallace YouTube
Steve O’Donnell then made it clear that NASCAR had no intention of moving away from the playoffs, “The format is one thing, right, but playoffs? We’re not going to go away from playoffs. We read fans and everything. We will as we always do right? Steve’s led us to this. We’ll absolutely look at, you know, what form the playoffs take in the off-season. You always learn, like I said before. But playoffs in and of itself as Steve said, you cannot argue with the quality of racing that the playoffs have delivered. You can talk about the format if we do some different things, but absolutely we’re going to stick with it,”
Steve Phelps and Steve O’Donnell say the playoffs are here to stay and that the format produced great racing this year. pic.twitter.com/l0WNzkgmzW
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) November 8, 2024
Now, following Joey Logano winning the race at Phoenix and being crowned NASCAR’s 2024 Cup Series Champion, Elton Sawyer reiterated that NASCAR is open to adjusting the playoff format.
He told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, “So, I would think if we take a deeper dive and look at this and we look at A. How do you get in the playoffs? B. How do you move from round to round? And is that equitable? Is that the best way to do it? And I think you take all that input, and we’ve got some really smart people in our industry with again our teams and our drivers being able to get feedback and see exactly, maybe what we have is the best model. But if it’s not, we want to-. We’re open. We’re all ears on it. And we have some ideas. And we want to make sure as an industry we’re doing the right thing for our sport and the right thing to crown our champions.”
🤔 “Is that the best way to do it?” #NASCAR‘s Elton Sawyer says the sanctioning body is willing to look at the playoff format during the offseason.
More ➡️ https://t.co/MKhd9eLXG8 pic.twitter.com/KVcCEkLcTX
— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) November 12, 2024
What do you make of Sawyer’s comments?