Kevin Harvick names potential solutions to fix NASCAR playoff system

Kevin Harvick has heard the disgruntled fans and media members complain about NASCAR’s playoff format following Joey Logano’s victory at Phoenix Raceway over the weekend, and he believes there’s an easy fix.

While Harvick benefitted from the format in the past, he also was burned by it numerous times. Evidently, the former Cup Series champion believes a step in the right direction would be placing a heightened emphasis on the regular season, instead of moving the field back to square one after each round of the playoffs.

“I think the big question is, what is the weight of the regular season, and where does that regular season champion fall?,” Harvick pondered, via the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour. “We talked about putting them in the Championship 4. We started a conversation last week that was fun and intriguing to me, and I think that, when you come back and look at those things, maybe that champion goes into the final eight, maybe not the final four, and having to earn your way to the end. I think it’s definitely not — if we could make the regular season more meaningful, that’s really the accomplishment that I’d like to see made over the first 26 weeks, to have that weighted to what it is, because it’s not like other sports. 

“You can’t compare this to football and baseball and basketball, and this team got eliminated and that team got eliminated. Well, let’s also remember those teams are getting three out of five, or four out of seven chances to get eliminated. It’s not a single race. It’s not a single game, outside of football. I mean, football is more along the lines of what we do, but basketball and baseball, hockey — all those sports are settled differently. … You have to have some sort of playoff format. But I think the biggest thing is figuring out how to weight that regular season to make it matter as much as possible.”

Alas, Harvick isn’t clamoring for a return to the Winston Cup days, but he believes a system where an emphasis is placed on the regular season would create more dramatic racing throughout the entire season. Perhaps he has a point, and it’s something NASCAR officials would be wise to consider.

Time will tell if there’s any changes to the NASCAR playoff format, but Kevin Harvick, along with many others, wouldn’t mind a couple of tweaks, at least. Regardless, Joey Logano deserves all the credit in the world, as he’s perfected the strategy for winning titles under the current system.