Say what you want about Dale Earnhardt Jr, whether you’re a fan or not, but one word definitely defines Junior and his personality: passionate.
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Everything he does, he does with passion. It started during his racing days, when he formed a race team with his sister, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, and also became an investor in the CARS Tour grassroots racing series. How he comes across on NASCAR broadcasts and his analysis, his business interests, and so much more, it’s all done with passion.
And that’s exactly what Junior suggested earlier this week on his ‘The Dale Jr. Download’ podcast of how he’d like to see the current NASCAR Cup playoff system changed. As he often does, Junior brought up an example involving his late father and the old points system, which did not have a dedicated playoff format.
“What I think I’m missing and what I believe has more value than people realize is—so we’d be racing along, right?” Junior said. “We’d go to Charlotte in October. There’s probably 8 to 10 races left in this season, right? Dad’s right in the thick of the battle, right? Say he’s 40 points behind Rusty Wallace or Mark Martin or somebody, right?
“And we go to Charlotte, and 13 laps into the race, he broke a cam and [finished] last. That felt like a gut punch. That was a gut punch equal to missing the final four. You’re sitting there in the regular season that we know today, but in a 36-race playoff, you’ve broke a cam, finished last at Charlotte, and lost 150 points. That’s a big freaking blow. Or say he’s 40 points behind Mark Martin and Martin blows the damn motor and Dad runs and goes wins the race.
“That kind of thing, being that impactful in the middle of the season or even at the front of the season, that is missing now, right? Your driver goes to Daytona in the final race of the regular season and flips out and crashes. It just is what it is. He’s in the playoffs. We’re starting the playoffs next week. So, reset. No big deal.”
Junior: Bring Back The Old System
So what Earnhardt Jr. wants is to simply return to the old system, where the driver with the best consistency and the most points over the entire 36-race season is crowned the championship winner.
“Run 36 [races], it’s no big deal,” Earnhardt said. “Say, Ohio State (football) loses the sixth game of the season in a season they know they can’t lose games, right? What if they up and lost that sixth game of the season? Think about the emotional roller coaster that you go on at that point of the year.
“That’s what is gone, and those things had you plug in at Race 18, 16, or 20 because that soul-crushing moment was always around the corner or the opposite of soul crushing, right? That moment of holy (crap) man, we’ve just busted out and got a 100-point lead today because this guy had bad luck. That moment was always possible in the regular season,” he added.
Earnhardt Jr. also believes returning to the old winner-take-all system in the 36-race schedule is the way to go.
“So, you were there to see it because you knew you needed to watch,” Earnhardt said. “Losses don’t hurt as much, right? I’m not talking about the drivers, the industry, mechanics, not their feeling. I’m talking about the fan that’s wanting to tune in and watch this race. I miss wondering how that Race 10 blown motor or whatever that moment that thing that was going to really twist up the point system and create this hill that had to be climbed to get back into it.
Fans Will Like A Return To the Old System Rather than Keep the Current Playoff Format
“And fans are still going to get excitement from the race. The drivers are still like, even if you’re out of it, you’re still racing for the win. Chase Elliott, at Race 10, has a problem, gets crashed early, or something, and loses his points lead. Now he’s 100 points out of the points lead.
“Well, I’m going to tune in the next week to see if he can claw back and get some of those (lost points) back. He’s got to get those 100 points back over the next several weeks. We got to get back in this points battle. That kind of stuff there is gone.
“Those are the things that I think that we’re going to need some help with to determine. We need some smart people that could predict how the emotional roller coaster really affects fan engagement, long-term growth, and people tuning in, right? Trying to have eliminations and Game 7 moments are beneficial, but at a detriment to other things that are now gone, that we don’t enjoy anymore or don’t have anymore.
“The other things would keep us hanging around, right, luring us in every single week, wondering what we might experience.”
Now that certainly is food for thought.
