Alan Gustafson sums up NASCAR problem Chase | Sports News

The much-maligned NASCAR Playoff format stays a scorching subject with the offseason quickly approaching, and up to date feedback from Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Alan Gustafson seem to sum up one main concern with the present winner-takes-all construction.

Gustafson, who works as crew chief for Chase Elliott, mentioned the state of their Playoff run during a current look on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, following the No. 9 Chevrolet’s journey to victory lane on the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway. 

Now safely by way of to the Round of 8 with Charlotte’s Roval nonetheless to go, Gustafson famous how the present format inherently alters how groups method races within the Playoffs, with the No. 9 now basically free to race nevertheless they select whereas others will need to take a more structured and restricted method.

“The last two years, we’ve had to race our way in on points, and we couldn’t race for the win,” he famous on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “At the Roval, that’s like a distinct difference in strategy, right? You have to either short the stages and go for the win or run the stages and get the points, and we had to do the latter the last couple years, and it really prohibits your ability to win the race. I think you can still have good runs, which we have, but it’s just hard to win. 

“So, this year we can do whatever we want to do, right? We don’t have to worry about any of that, and we can short the stages, we can run the stages, we can do whatever we want to do, and it’s going to have no impact on the fact that we make the transfer to the next round this year.”

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The prospect of merely specializing in reaching victory lane for a third time this season as a substitute of stressing over the prospect of being dumped from the championship combine for missing factors was one which Gustafson was “excited” by, noting how his staff has “the chance to be aggressive there.” 

He later added, “I think to keep the focus, every race on just strictly winning the race is a good thing.”

But his feedback sum up the actual fact the playoff format means not each race issues for each staff given the context of the factors system. And that’s one thing Elliott desires modified. 

2020 champion Elliott mentioned the Playoff format back in July, and particularly, his perception that NASCAR ought to return to its pre-2004 construction of a 36-race factors scoring system to resolve the general winner.

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“We’ve had a really good and competitive battle to the regular season (championship) over – correct me if I’m wrong – the last two or three years,” he instructed The Athletic. “It’s really been pretty tight all the way down to Daytona.

“If you just take that as your sample set over the first 26 weeks, it looks pretty solid to me. The system would be just fine if you just had a full season. And if somebody runs away with it, so what?”

A change to the present 10-race format seems more and more inevitable as stress continues to mount from followers and drivers alike. In reality, during his newest podcast, Dale Earnhardt Jr. famous that he’s sensing a potential change of coronary heart from NASCAR concerning the chance of returning to the full-season format. 

Recalling a prior assembly of the Playoff committee through which different codecs had been addressed, he sensed that reverting to the full-season format “had about a two percent chance.” However, as of a current assembly, the sentiment appears to have modified, now believing “it’s got about a 30 percent chance, 40 percent chance.”

Should this show too drastic a change, an different “3-3-4” format has additionally gathered steam of late, with the champion topped over the course of 4 races quite than one.