NASCAR hints at playoff changes, open to moving away from some spec parts

In an exclusive interview on the Dale Jr. Download, NASCAR president Steve O’Donnell announced a planned increase from 670HP to 750HP for select tracks in 2026. He also touched on a variety of other topics, hinting at both possible changes to the current championship format, and even opening Cup garage up to more innovation again.

On the playoff format, O'Donnell clearly stated that any announcement regarding that won't come until after the 2025 season reaches its conclusion.

"We got rules in place for this year," said O'Donnell. "What I don't want to do is take away from whoever wins the championship this year. Those were the rules. Everybody knew them. Let's go race, and whoever wins that championship, I'm going to stand behind that driver and team and say that's our champion."

While he didn't state what changes may be coming to the format, it's becoming clear that NASCAR wants to move away from a one-race final round, and he focused on conversations he has had with one driver in particular. 

"So what gets me to think about it is Christopher Bell. The guy who will come in and have a conversation with me behind closed doors, doesn't go out and tweet about everything and say, 'hey, here's what I think. Here's what.' He just gives me an honest opinion, which I agree with, of, 'hey, man, if I roll off 10 wins in a year, and I go to one race and couple other guys get into me or whatever, I'm not the champion.' Four years in a row, that happens. I don't want the next Christopher Bell, who is ten years old right now, thinking about NASCAR, wanting to go to NASCAR, wanting to be a champion, and say, 'huh, this is a little bit more of a chance on a one race, right?' And I also look at it like Christopher Bell, to me, is a superstar in our sport. You roll off four championships in a row with eight wins and a body of work, whatever that may be, that's good for our sport. People are talking about him."

Bell recently said publicly that he is in favor of a full-season points format, which NASCAR hasn't utilized since 2003.

Playoffs dominate every discussion all season long

Shane van Gisbergen, Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet

As the conversation progressed, O'Donnell said he doesn't like how the format is dominating the discussion at every single event. We've seen it happen several times where there will be a fascinating story (like Harrison Burton winning after finding out he was out of a ride), only for it to be overshadowed by contentious debates around that driver being in the playoffs. More recently, Shane van Gisbergen's historic win streak on road/street courses turned into a discussion over the legitimacy of his spot in the playoffs.

O'Donnell mentioned the Daytona 500, specifically, saying: "I think about how big that race is, and one of the narrative is, oh, he's in the playoffs. Man, it's the Daytona 500. Yes, he's in the playoffs. I like that you have to win. Nobody can question -- I will argue 'till I'm blue in the face that the racing has changed in terms of, if you got to win the race, some racing has changed. So there's some of that element I don't want to go away. And then just looking at future stars, drivers coming in, having a multitude of races potentially that you gotta put a body of work together. So I think about all those things. I'm not giving away where I'm at, but I I completely recognize where we're at today. I also recognize that a number of folks that are out there pretty vocally were part of this, right? And everybody said, 'hey, here's what we're going to do.' Everybody signed up for that.

"So, I think all I would want is wherever we go, we're going to communicate that, but we need the industry to buy in. The biggest thing is we need the drivers to feel like whatever is in place, I have the shot, and we can start questioning, if something happens, maybe look in the mirror, versus maybe something happened in a one race scenario. That's where I'm at."

Moving away from (some) spec parts in the Next Gen car?

General view

Interestingly, O'Donnell also indicated that the status quo with the Next Gen (or Gen-7) car may change in the future, with the sanctioning body willing to open the door to more engineering and innovation again. The car has been criticized for its spec nature and how the teams can't innovate and tweak on their machinery the way they once could.

"We're always open to change," said O'Donnell "The one piece that i really look at and I think our group does is you've got this car, you got some things contained from a cost standpoint, but what does everybody really like? The ability for a team to maybe tweak on the car, find an advantage, do something cool. What's the next iteration of that that can come from a race team. Now that we've got the parts and pieces, I think long-term you can look at maybe a race team is making parts again. Maybe some different things you can open up. Could you ever look at a cost cap, right? So, you open those things up. But we've at least sort of stopped the wasteful spending, and now we want to get it back to where an engineer can come in, tweak on a car, or an OEM can say, 'hey this is my IP and I want to drive something from a new technology standpoint.' We're absolutely open to continuing to tweak on it. I think we almost had to stop the bleeding of the costs, and now really concentrate on you got the baseline, now make the racing better. 

He went on to repeat the point about getting costs under control, and that it's now possible to look at a return to some 'old-school parts' and allowing engineers to tweak some things in an effort to gain a competitive advantage.

"What happened with us was there wasn't a lot of great trust between our competition group and the teams," admitted O'Donnell ."We've done a lot of work to improve that, have some good dialogue, and it was at a point where we asked the teams to participate and go, 'hey, do you want to make this specific part?' Financially, it didn't make a lot of sense, and there probably wasn't a lot of trust back-and-forth either. You fast forward to now where those conversations are happening. Could Roush make this, could someone else make this part? And I think that starts to potentially open it up. Not sure we'll get there, but I agree with you (Dale Jr.). Getting back to that identity of what it is versus just this car over here that no one kind of put together. There's some work to do there."

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