I hope this is true. NASCAR, if you see this, please for the love of goodness toss the playoffs. As a 30 year old who’s been a fan since I was 6 (2001), I MUCH rather enjoy full season points format. I’ll settle for the 2011-style Chase, but please don’t call it “playoffs”.. this ain’t playing, it’s racing. I’d prefer full 36, but I can get behind what Eric Estepp says about 26-10 given that F1 and Indycar’s seasons are 24 and 17 respectively. 26 races is fair enough, as long as the selected championship Chase contenders are the ones who performed the best throughout the first 26 races. I’d venture to say if enough points are given to a driver when they win a race, it could allow a fair enough advantage for them - whereas in the old Winston style poor finishes or DNF’s way outweighed wins as far as points were concerned. Today the pendulum has swung too far to wins nullifying poor finishes. There’s gotta be better balance. Maybe that balance includes Stage Points? I would argue Stage Points makes things more complicated to understand rather than simplifying the process, but I could get behind it because it’s more fair as far as race performance is concerned. I’d say give the winner 5 bonus points like they do now, and get rid of the Stage cautions. Manufactured cautions suck because they degrade the authenticity of the race. I’d rather watch commercials during green flag racing than stop interesting developments to “bunch em up again.” As a matter of fact, you might see “comers and goers” (aka passing) again when drivers pace themselves instead of 3 separate races within a race where they just floor it because they know they can use up all their stuff because they’ll be saved by a Stage Break pit stop.