The NASCAR controversy at Martinsville showed why the playoff system needs to be overhauled or eliminated altogether

It's time for NASCAR to embrace a radical idea and fundamentally overhaul its points system.

The weaknesses of the current playoff system were again highlighted Sunday at Martinsville when Chevrolet drivers refused to pass William Byron in the final laps and Christopher Bell bounced off the wall several times as he passed a suddenly slowing Bubba in the finale Wallace passed lap.

Bell's pass to Wallace put him in the Final Four for about 20 minutes before NASCAR deemed the move a “safety violation.” Bell was moved down the starting order and Byron joined race winners Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano and Tyler Reddick in the group of four drivers who will compete for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series title on November 10 in Phoenix.

In 2004, NASCAR abandoned its full-season points format and instead introduced a 10-race postseason featuring the best drivers from the first 26 races. At the time, NASCAR was the fastest-growing sports series in the country and was looking to challenge the NFL to become the top player with American sports fans. The final race of the 2003 season – a race that had no bearing on the title because Matt Kenseth had won the championship a week earlier – had over 7.3 million viewers.

This playoff format has evolved several times in the two decades since its inception. First, the number of drivers was expanded from 10 to 12, and then again in 2014 to 16 when NASCAR decided to split the 10 races into four different rounds with a winner-only race featuring four finalists .

After three seasons of chaos and small sample sizes having too large an impact, the playoff system was changed again in 2017 with the introduction of stage points. The four rounds remained, but riders were allowed to take bonus points from race and stage wins in the hope that the final race would see four of the best riders of the season fighting for the title.

This is the format that still exists today. And after seven years it has to disappear. NASCAR's teams and manufacturers have become too good at manipulating the system.

Just look at how the final rounds unfolded in Martinsville. With Byron the only Chevrolet representative just one position away from losing his place in the final four, he had two Chevy drivers behind him in Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon. Neither driver qualified for the postseason, although they appeared to have faster cars than Byron in the final laps.

None of the riders made a move against Byron. Instead, both riders rode side by side with Byron walking in front of them.

Since it was clear that Byron would not be passed by the drivers behind him, Toyota driver Bubba Wallace radioed his crew that he had a puncture. While Blaney's final lap took about 21.4 seconds, Wallace's final lap took 24.9 seconds.

This allowed Bell, who was also a lap down, to pass Wallace in turns 3 and 4. As Bell made the move, his car visibly came loose and he crashed into the wall. He kept hitting the wall as he accelerated to the finish line and didn't make up any positions.

The pass seemed to get him into the playoffs. But NASCAR had seen a similar move before. In 2022, Ross Chastain rammed his car into the outside wall to sneak into the title race. After the season, NASCAR said moves like Chastain's would not be allowed in the future.

Bell's move wasn't quite like Chastain's. But that wasn't good enough for NASCAR, which put Byron back in the final four at Bell's expense.

No immediate penalties were imposed on Wallace, Chastain or Dillon. And who knows, maybe NASCAR will do a little investigation and punish them later this week. Finally, there is a rule in the sanctioning body that states that drivers and teams must try to achieve the best possible result in an event.

Longtime NASCAR fans will remember exactly why this rule exists. In 2013, Clint Bowyer intentionally spun at Richmond to get his Michael Waltrip Racing Martin Truex Jr. into the playoffs. In the days following the race, NASCAR knocked Truex out of the playoffs and added both Ryan Newman and Jeff Gordon while expanding the playoff field from 12 to 13.

The race-rigging scandal was huge. And Sunday made it clear that teams and manufacturers are still manipulating races in similar ways.

Not much has changed since Bowyer's founding eleven years ago. A year later, Ryan Newman ditched Kyle Larson in Phoenix to get to the championship race. Kevin Harvick made a rather suspicious move at the end of a playoff race at Talladega in 2015, although he denied ever seeing Trevor Bayne before hitting Bayne's car. In 2022, Cole Custer was penalized 50 points for slowing to allow teammate Chase Briscoe to pass in an elimination race. These examples are by no means the only ones. After the August race at Daytona, Xfinity Series driver Parker Retzlaff admitted he had no intention of pushing Ford driver Harrison Burton to victory and an automatic playoff spot.

To be clear, you can't blame teams and drivers for doing everything they could to help each other. They are heavily encouraged by NASCAR's current monetary system. Playoff teams make significantly more money at the end of the season than non-playoff teams. And the manufacturer's title is still an important aspect of racing.

But racing, like baseball, is a sport with large numbers of participants. And NASCAR's current four-round playoff format gives teams too many opportunities to manipulate small-sample races.

NASCAR teams are incredibly smart and prepare for almost any scenario. And it's much easier to prepare for scenarios in a three-race playoff round than a full 36-race season.

As NASCAR's TV ratings have fallen dramatically over the last decade, it is clear that the playoff system is not attracting casual viewers. Last season's all-winner title race had just over half the viewers of the “meaningless” season finale in 2023.

NASCAR has nothing to lose by changing its playoff format again. Casual fans obviously don't leave NFL games to attend the playoffs. A good compromise would be a return to the 10-race playoff format of the 2000s. But an even better and fairer solution for everyone involved would be a season-long title race like in Formula 1 and IndyCar. Yes, both series have lower TV ratings than NASCAR in the United States, but racing fans will look forward to good, hard racing whether a title is on the line or not.

The NASCAR audience currently consists entirely of racing fans. It owes its drivers and teams the opportunity to show who is the best throughout the season. And it's not just in the fall that you can best play the system.