Just Win, Baby … Or Else

1. Are you not entertained (by a regular season finale at Daytona)?

It’s safe to say the idea of holding the final race of the NASCAR Cup Series regular season at Daytona is never going to be endorsed by drivers or owners. Between the ridiculous tally of mangled cars (17 running at the end! Only 10 cars on the lead lap!) and the, shall we say, mercurial August weather in Florida, it’s easy to find aspects of it to grumble about.

But from pure entertainment perspective, it was hard to beat: crazy moves on the track that you generally wouldn’t see until the closing laps. A constantly shifting set of contenders for the win, including some at the end you wouldn’t normally see even at other superspeedway races. And incredible, down-to-the-last-second tension in the race for the final playoff spot between Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr.

There’s something to be said for a more predictable race to be the final one before the playoffs, one where the potential for action is still high but the odds of total chaos are lower. But if your standard for the cutoff race is “anything can happen,” and you mean it literally, Daytona is the best possible choice — and it proved it this year.

2. Like Al Davis would say, Martin Truex Jr. needed to “just win, baby”

Many, many people are going to be talking about how “unfair” it is that Truex didn’t make the playoff field. There will be suggestions that changes need to be made, that NASCAR needs to somehow ensure that drivers who are consistently good throughout the whole regular season are included, wins or no wins.

But that’s all nonsense.

For starters, for every stat you quote to show how good Truex was this season, there’s another that shows he really wasn’t. He won more stages than anyone. That’s good. And he led 456 laps, more than all but five other drivers, and finished in the top 10 12 times, tied for seventh (with Blaney, among others).

But as far as this being some kind of miscarriage of justice, consider that Truex had just three top-five finished all year — one more than the likes of Erik Jones and Chris Buescher, and less than all but two of the playoff drivers (none of whom has less). His season was aggressively fine, but dominant it was not.

Most of all, though, is that NASCAR drivers control their own playoff destiny from the very start. Win and you’re in, even in 2022 when it seemed more drivers than ever were capable of taking the checkered flag. It’s true that…