Confirming NASCAR is leaning toward tweaking its Cup Series Playoffs, chief operating officer Steve O’Donnell said it’s a virtual certainty that the location of the title race will change.
During the inaugural episode of the new “Hauler Talk” podcast, O’Donnell discussed the deep dive into the playoffs that NASCAR is taking this year with an industrywide committee, highlighting a rotation of the championship as an integral part of the conversation.
“It’s more complicated than just waving a checkered flag and say, ‘Let’s move the championship,’ but I do think a rotation is going to be really important for us,” O’Donnell said. “If (a driver has) won 45 Phoenix races in a row and the championship is there, it’s probably not a good look for the sport, right? And we’ve had a good mixture (of champions at Phoenix). But I think a rotation is what the fans would like.
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O’Donnell essentially ruled out superspeedways (which lack support from drivers and teams) and added that road and street courses “might be a little tough.” That leaves short tracks and intermediates as fair game – and not necessarily just those that are in warm-weather destinations in the fall.
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There also has been speculation about the future site of The Clash, which raced at a sold-out Bowman Gray as its third venue in the past five years. O’Donnell hopes there will be a second consecutive year in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (“I’d like to see us go back there in 2026 and reward the fans who showed up”) but said NASCAR might have two primary options for its Clash tracks after that.
“You could go international or you could use that same model of going to a short track in the U.S.,” O’Donnell said. “Where NASCAR comes in, rewards that track and their competitors for what they’re doing and makes some upgrades to the facility that we leave for the next generation of racers. And then we stay for a little bit and move on to the next one. So I think a combination of both of those would be really cool. I really like the idea of NASCAR coming in and investing in the short tracks.”
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