As rumors continue to abound about NASCAR officials making a possible change to the current playoff system, Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott likes one of the potential formats that have been floated.
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That would be a 3-3-4 format – two rounds of three races and a final four-race round to determine the champion, rather than the current 3-3-3-1 format, which eliminates three drivers at the end of each round and resets the drivers’ points heading into the next.
“I think it would be better than what we have,” Elliott said Friday during media availability at Bristol Motor Speedway. “You just have a larger amount of races to decide (the champion).
“It would seemingly give an opportunity to have something that’s totally out of somebody’s hands not completely derail their championship day … their shot at Phoenix (the current season finale, although it will move to Homestead-Miami Speedway next year).”
Elliott, the son of NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, acknowledges the potential new format has its shortcomings, but he likes what he sees.
“Is it perfect? Probably not, but I would say that it sounds better (than the current format),” he added.
The driver of the No. 9 Chevrolet won the NASCAR Cup championship in 2020, but has struggled since then, finishing fourth in both 2021 and 2022, completely missing qualifying for the playoffs in 2023 (due to missing seven early-season races after suffering a broken leg in a snowboarding incident), and wound up seventh last year.
But There’s Another Playoff Format That Elliott Also Likes
However, nearly two months ago at Indianapolis for the Brickyard 400, Elliott said at the time that his first choice if there was a change to the current playoff format, it would be to ditch the playoffs totally and go back to the old system where the driver who earns the most points during the course of the season is crowned the champion.
“The system would be just fine if you just had a full season (and no playoffs,” Elliott said. “And if somebody runs away with it, so what? Let’s celebrate the fact that somebody ran away with it, that somebody was just that good.
“Motorsports does not have to be like everybody else to be successful. And I’ll stand by that till I get done (retires).”
While NASCAR might still be open to changes to the playoff system sooner rather than later, Elliott seems to have realized that dreams of the old format returning to the top level of stock car racing are a dream too far-fetched in the modern-day age of the sport.
