In my youth, I wasn’t one to call NASCAR, or auto racing in general, a sport. Sure, each race is a competition, and there’s a champion awarded at the end of every season, but hell, I have a driver’s license, and all they’re doing is going left! Well, you can pick up a basketball at any time and dribble between your legs one thousand times every day, but you’ll likely never dazzle people with the skills of a prime James Harden. The same goes for every NASCAR driver; they’ve trained their entire lives to be that good at operating those vehicles; how many morons have you watched speed pass you in moderate traffic only to cause an accident and bring the highway to a standstill? Ignorance breeds apathy; the drivers who compete in all forms of auto racing are legitimate athletes, even if it doesn’t appear that way at first glance.

That didn’t stop my adolescent self from quickly getting bored whenever a NASCAR race was on television in a family member or friend’s house. Perhaps it was because I never attended a race in person when I was in those developing years, maybe it was because I crashed my uncle’s go-kart into my grandparents’ metal wire fencing in their spacious rural backyard at six years old, or possibly the imagery of cars racing around in ovals in one continuous direction for hundreds of laps wasn’t engaging to my developing brain; point is, I’m not a long-time fan bemoaning the state of a sport I grew up cherishing. I am someone, however, who’s always appreciated the craftmanship required in building, maintaining, and tuning a motor vehicle; every red-blooded male likes hearing the roar of an engine and going fast. Monster Jam appealed to my younger self, and while it’s still plenty of fun and an event I usually try to catch when it comes to town, the older me has become more interested in competitive sporting contests. I need to stress that while auto racing is not a traditional stick-and-ball sport, it is still a contest where specialized competitors agree to the terms of the competition and go out to perform to the best of their ability and win the said contest, a display of the dramatic heights of the human condition as any other sporting contest.

That point needs to be stressed because, for the last 20 years, the governing body of NASCAR itself has seemingly forgotten that fact. The 2003 Winston Cup Series season was the last time NASCAR determined its champion through a year-long points system, like every other auto racing association in the world, instead of choosing to introduce playoffs into an auto racing sport. The idea for a separate postseason in a sport that has long valued consistency throughout a scheduled season, no matter which governing body or type of motor vehicle used for that governing body, is not only antithetical; it flat-out delegitimizes winning the championship.

I initially began writing this essay in the dog days of Summer, just as the 2024 NASCAR Cup “regular season” was coming to an end; arbitrary YouTube¹ videos² by NASCAR fans³ complaining about the history of the playoffs and text threads of previous seasons re-scored under the old Latford scoring system showcasing the “true” champion meandered in the upper echelon of my brain as I attempted to devise a scoring system of my design. As the story goes, Bob Latford, a school friend of Bill France Jr., the former CEO of NASCAR and son of founder Bill France Sr., devised what would become NASCAR’s longest-lasting scoring system at Bill France Jr.’s request after jotting down some numbers on a cocktail napkin while at a bar⁴. The crucial piece of context often overlooked in the full scope of this situation is the timing of all these events. In 1971, Bill France Sr. acquired sponsorship rights from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which agreed to become the title sponsor of the association, turning their “Grand National” series into the “Winston Cup” series, and further upped the ante in 1972, removing all dirt tracks from the schedule, decreasing the number of races by 35.4%, making it the first season to have less than 40 races since 1954 and a mandated minimum race length of 250 miles for oval tracks. The “modern era” of NASCAR had been born, and Bill France Sr. immediately handed over⁵ his position as CEO to his son; amidst all this was the imminent oil crisis and the previously intimated issue of crowning a champion at season’s end.

By 1974, Bill France Jr.’s second season as CEO of NASCAR, the association had already gone through five scoring systems since its inaugural 1949 season. Initially, the first two systems were based on prize money, as the bigger, more attractive races come with a larger purse; the second system was a slightly more refined rendition, but the third system, introduced in 1968, rewarded drivers based on mileage. In 1972, the first of the “modern era,” NASCAR changed its system again, awarding drivers a set amount of points based on their finishing rank in a race, with their distance covered based on the length of the race also factored into those points. It was a confusing formula to have two separate scoring methods mixing, along with doling out bonus points to anyone leading for a lap, so seemingly for the sake of simplicity, in 1974, the previously-mentioned second season of Bill France Jr. as CEO, NASCAR went back to awarding the championship based on prize money, this time scored as a driver’s winnings multiplied by the numbers of races ran and divided by 1,000. Thankfully, Bob Latford created his system on a napkin and made a legitimate method of crowning a NASCAR champion for 29 seasons until complaints about consistency drowned out logical decision-making⁶.

Don’t expect a harangue from me about the failure of the NASCAR playoffs; there’s an opulence of YouTube videos about that topic. However, I must mention that the format artificially creates drama and tension by removing any lead a driver can build throughout the season by resetting the points lead; as many have said for years, a driver can win 35 races and still lose the championship if he loses the final race. I have to mention that because, as others have pointed out, the best driver for the entirety of the season usually isn’t rewarded with the championship under NASCAR’s ever-evolving playoff system.

It’s here where I now humbly admit my efforts at creating a scoring system that rewarded aggressive driving and consistency were a failure. The realization that the Latford system was NASCAR’s ideal scoring format dawned on me as if the answer wasn’t staring me in the face while I slaved away doing calculations by hand for months. I attempted various scoring methods that emphasized different scoring aspects in each differing model I tried, and yet I always came to the same conclusion; the results were always too varied and didn’t seem to reward the driver with the best average finish. For as much as people complained about it, the Latford system correlated to the driver with the best average finish most of the time, while the playoffs rarely reward the best driver with the championship. It’s not the Latford system’s fault that Matt Kenseth won the 2003 Winston Cup despite winning one race, the same way it’s not the system’s fault Bill Elliott came in second to Darrell Waltrip in 1985 despite winning 11 races to Waltrip’s three; it’s the rest of the field’s fault for not being as consistent.

Again, I will state that motorsports are not stick-and-ball sports, and it’s ridiculous to try and institute a playoff system in a highly variable and wide-encompassing sport like auto racing. A season-long ranking with a definite start and end is the only legitimate way to crown a champion in motorsports, evidenced by the fact no other respectable motorsport association has switched to a playoff system since NASCAR decided to. I’m glad I didn’t release this essay when I initially began work on it, as now that the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season has ended, I can state Joey Logano has won his third championship after finishing 13th in average finish for the season and collected three of his four wins for the season in the final ten races to collect his championship; much like many champions in seasons prior since the implementation of the playoffs. Oh yeah, that 13th-ranked average finish for the season, at 17.1, is also the worst all-time of any champion⁷ in NASCAR history. NASCAR needs to admit that the playoffs have been a failure and return to the Latford system; maybe they can rework the scoring differential in finishing placement for a race and change the bonus points system if they feel like they must, as long as it still adheres to it, I’m sure NASCAR fans would rejoice⁸.

However, I fear that will never happen, and NASCAR will continue down this path of pushing spectacle over sport. If you read my previous essay, you likely got the impression I hold the NBA In-Season Tournament in little regard, and you’d be right. I realize they renamed it the NBA Cup, but I’m not dignifying the NBA’s bad ideas by playing along with their semantic games. Regardless, to “spice up” the “regular season,” NASCAR has decided to implement their own In-Season Tournament; I’m sure TNT losing media rights to the NBA⁹ and refocusing their attention towards NASCAR plays no part in this. It’s ridiculous that a motorsport that arbitrarily segments its season into a playoff structure because they were worried about losing ratings in the latter stages of their season to the NFL should a driver lock the championship up early¹⁰ is now going to award a regular-season champion, in-season champion, and overall season champion using three different scoring methods.

I won’t pretend I have the answers to NASCAR’s dwindling popularity. Other long-time fans have theorized it was probably never meant to be as large as it was at its peak¹¹, and now it has correctly relegated itself to its niche corner of the sports world. Still, the long-term business plans of the France family, the ones who’ve been in control of NASCAR since its founding, didn’t prevent NASCAR viewership from plummeting from its mid-2000s heights, nor have they created the personalities like in decades past or sustained the environment that allowed those personalities to thrive.

Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin, the heads of 23XI Racing, in conjunction with Front Row Motorsports, filed an antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR on October 2nd of this year¹², alleging anti-competitive business practices by the France family and the terms of the new NASCAR charter system. Bill France Sr., the founder of NASCAR, was known for ruling with an iron fist, banning drivers who went against his business practices for what he deemed “actions detrimental to stock car racing” and changing the rules to allow underpowered cars to compete against the only three competitors remaining when the rest of the drivers boycotted the inaugural Talladega 500 due to Bill France Sr.’s business decisions¹³. His successors have also had their fair share of controversies; the key point is that the France family has maintained tight control over all aspects of NASCAR and continues to exert more influence over the teams in these new charter agreements. They’ve run unchallenged since 1949, but they’re now going up against Jeffrey L. Kessler in the court of law. This lawyer is the same man who is responsible for the institution of free agency in the NFL; NIL deals in college sports, successfully resolved the United States women’s national soccer team pay discrimination suit, and helped each of the big four North American sports leagues player’s associations with their CBA agreements over the past two decades.

I’m not advocating for a dismantling of NASCAR’s corporate set-up; I don’t have the decades of passion built up in me to want to start a rallying chant around the France family potentially losing a vast amount of control over NASCAR. However, I refer back to the Gilded Age, when government intervention was necessary to break up corporate monopolies that stifled economic growth and creativity. Perhaps NASCAR, much like the theory that it’s relegating itself to its proper niche in the overall sports market, is facing its arbitration agreement breaking point like all the other big four sports leagues. There have been rumors of a split in NASCAR¹⁴, much like IndyCar did in their 1996 season; while the two leagues later reunified, it created irreparable damage to the ratings that the sanctioning body still hasn’t fully recovered from, and if this suit fails, we may eventually see that happen. The lawsuit may be too little too late regardless, but if it goes in the driver’s favor, we may yet witness NASCAR’s stimulus.

Editor’s Notes

1. YouTube/Elite Precision 29 – 11/26/2023 – The NASCAR Playoffs Has Been a Complete Failure
2. YouTube/JakeSimRacing – 11/9/2023 – The Playoffs Are Ruining NASCAR
3. YouTube/S1apSh0es – 12/6/2020 – The NASCAR Playoffs are Worse than You Thought
4. The Morning Call – 11/18/2004 – Old point system could decide Chase
5. SPEEDtv/WebArchive – 9/14/2003 – A Natural Progression
6. Sun Journal – 8/3/2003 – NASCAR may change points system
7. ESPN – 11/11/2024 – Forget the playoff format, Logano is a three-time NASCAR champ
8. YouTube/EllyProductions49 – 11/23/2024 – The NASCAR Playoffs Suck
9. Yahoo! Finance – 6/5/2024 – Why losing NBA media rights would be ‘a big negative’ for Warner Bros. Discovery
10. This line of thinking is even more hilarious when you consider that no matter what NASCAR does or how phenomenal the racing is, it will invariably lose a portion of that Sunday audience to what is practically an institution in the average American life.
11. YouTube/EmpLemon – 3/3/2019 – there will Never Ever be another driver like Dale Earnhardt
12. CNBC – 10/2/2024 – Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing team sues NASCAR and CEO Jim France
13. YouTube/S1apSh0es – 12/10/2023 – NASCAR and the Dam of Legitimacy
14. Newsweek – 12/16/2024 – ‘Worst Case’ 23XI Racing And FRM Lawsuit Scenario Revealed For NASCAR