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

The weaknesses of the current playoff system were once again on full display Sunday at Martinsville, with Chevrolet drivers refusing to pass William Byron in the final laps and Christopher Bell bouncing off the wall multiple times in the finale as he passed a suddenly slow Bubba Wallace. embrace.

Bell’s pass to Wallace managed to keep him in Championship 4 for nearly 20 minutes. NASCAR deemed the move a “safety violation.” Bell has been dropped from the standings, and Byron joins race winner Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano and Tyler Reddick in a four-driver group that will compete for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship at Phoenix on Nov. 10 (3 p.m. ET, NBC) .

NASCAR abandoned the all-season points format in 2004 in favor of a 10-race postseason system with the best drivers from the first 26 races. At the time, NASCAR was the fastest-growing sports series in the country and had the designs to challenge the NFL for top billing among American sports fans. The final race of the 2003 season (a race that was not championship-important as Matt Kenseth had clinched the championship the week before) had more than 7.3 million viewers.

This play-off format has evolved many times in the two decades since its introduction. It was first expanded from 10 to 12 drivers, and then again to 16 in 2014 when NASCAR decided that the 10 races should be split into four different rounds with a winner-take-all race featuring four finalists.

After three seasons of chaos and small sample sizes having an outsized impact, the play-off system was changed again in 2017 with the introduction of stage points. There are four rounds remaining, but drivers will be allowed to carry bonus points from race and stage wins in the hope that four of the season’s best drivers will challenge for the championship in the final race.

This is the format that still exists today. And it should disappear after seven years. NASCAR’s teams and manufacturers have become extremely successful at gaming the system.

Check out how the final rounds at Martinsville unfolded. Byron was one place away from losing his place in the Championship 4 as the sole Chevrolet representative, with two Chevy drivers behind him in Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon. Neither driver qualified for the postseason, but they appeared to have faster cars than Byron, who lamented his long-distance pace after the race due to damage sustained earlier in the waning laps.

Neither driver made a move on Byron. Instead, both drivers raced side by side with Byron advancing ahead of them.

Since it was clear that Byron would not be passed by the drivers behind him, Toyota driver Bubba Wallace radioed his team that he had a flat tire. Blaney’s final lap took approximately 21.4 seconds, while Wallace’s final lap took 24.9 seconds.

This allowed Bell, who was also one lap down, to pass Wallace in Turns 3 and 4. When Bell made the move, his car visibly came loose and crashed into the wall. While accelerating to the finish line, he crashed into the wall many times and did not earn any points.

This pass looked like it would take him to the playoffs. But NASCAR has seen a similar move before. In 2022, Ross Chastain parked his car against the outside wall to sneak into the title race. After the season, NASCAR said moves like Chastain’s would no longer be allowed.

Bell’s move wasn’t exactly like Chastain’s. But that wasn’t good enough for NASCAR, which put Byron back into the championship finale at Bell’s expense.

No penalties were immediately imposed on Wallace, Chastain or Dillon. Who knows, maybe NASCAR will do some research and penalize them later in the week. After all, the sanctioning body has a rule stating that drivers and teams must try to achieve the best possible finish in a competition.

Longtime NASCAR fans will vividly remember why this rule exists. In 2013, Clint Bowyer purposely spun at Richmond to get Michael Waltrip Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr. into the playoffs. In the days after the race, NASCAR kicked Truex out of the playoffs and expanded the playoff field from 12 to 13 while adding both Ryan Newman and Jeff Gordon to the field.

The racial manipulation 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 returned 11 years ago. A year later, Ryan Newman abandoned Kyle Larson in Phoenix to join the championship race. Kevin Harvick made a rather questionable move at the end of the Talladega playoff race in 2015, but he denied seeing Trevor Bayne before crashing into Bayne’s car. In 2022, Cole Custer was penalized 50 points for slowing down to allow teammate Chase Briscoe to pass in the qualifying race. These examples are far from being the only examples. Following the August race at Daytona, Xfinity Series driver Parker Retzlaff admitted that he had no intention of pushing Ford driver Harrison Burton to victory and an automatic spot in the playoffs.

Let’s be clear: you can’t blame teams and drivers for doing what they can to help each other. They are heavily incentivized by NASCAR’s current monetary system. Playoff teams make much more money at the end of the season than teams that do not play in the playoffs. And the manufacturer’s title is still an important aspect of racing.

But racing is also a large-sample sport, like baseball. And NASCAR’s current four-round playoff format gives teams plenty of opportunity to manipulate small sample size races.

NASCAR teams are incredibly smart and prepared for almost any scenario. And a three-race playoff run is much easier to prepare for scenarios than a 36-race season.

As NASCAR’s TV ratings have plummeted over the past decade, it’s clear that the playoff system isn’t attracting casual viewers. Last season’s winner-take-all championship race saw just over half of the “pointless” season finale in 2003 watched.

NASCAR has nothing to lose by changing its playoff format once again. It’s clear that casual fans won’t abandon NFL games for the playoff race. A good compromise would be a return to the 10-race playoff format of the 2000s. But a better and fairer solution for everyone involved would be a season-long championship race, as in Formula 1 and IndyCar. Yes, both of these series have lower TV ratings than NASCAR in the United States, but race fans will watch good, tough racing with or without a title.

NASCAR’s audience at this point is strictly race fans. He owes his drivers and teams the opportunity to show who is the best all season long. And it can’t be best to game the system in the fall.