Jeff Burton addresses NASCAR progress on changing playoff format, highlights conversation that 'p***es' him off

NASCAR‘s 10-race, elimination style playoff format came under criticism after Joey Logano won the 2024 Cup Series championship. Logano captured his third title with an average finish of 17.1 — the worst for a driver in a championship-winning season.

Over the last 10 months since Logano’s championship win at Phoenix Raceway, the great playoff format debate has kicked into a new gear. Jeff Burton made it clear on Tuesday’s “Door Bumper Clear” podcast that he doesn’t care what the format is, and he thinks it’s “bullsh*t” when someone says that Logano was not a deserving champion.

“I don’t understand the argument — I know motorsports is different, there are a lot of things that are different about it — but if you wanna crown the best team throughout the whole year, there are a lot of Super Bowl champions that wouldn’t be the champions and nobody says, ‘Well, they’re not the deserving champion.’ So, that argument I don’t understand,” Burton said. “I think the fact that in motorsports, there’s a core audience that says, ‘I don’t like the playoffs because it’s different.’ It’s not necessarily that it’s wrong, it’s just that it’s different. We should listen to them, we shouldn’t ignore them. We shouldn’t say you’re wrong, they feel that way for a reason. So, we should listen to them and understand why they think that.

“NASCAR’s got a decision they have to make and they’re going to make it. And whoever wins the championship, whatever the rules are, that’s the deserving champion. It p***es me off when somebody says Joey Logano didn’t win the championship — bullsh*t. Yeah, he won a championship. There was a set of rules, and they went out and did it better than anybody else. You may not like that they won a championship, I get it. But don’t take the credit away from them for what they did.

“And by the way, Matt Kenseth won the championship when he won one race. And Benny Parsons won the championship when he finished on the lead lap one time, he won that championship, too. I don’t want to hear that, that’s bullsh*t. You may not like it, but that’s how they crown the champion. And you shouldn’t be disrespectful to the people that win it.”

Future of NASCAR playoff format has been widely discussed since last year

Logano has sort of become the face of the playoff era, winning three championships since it was introduced in 2014. At Playoff Media Day last month, Logano pushed back on his critics who believe his 2024 championship was undeserved.

“As a fan, I want to see [drivers] scared, and our playoff system now does that. I’ve always been the person to say, ‘If you’re complaining about it, then just do better.’ If you scored a bunch of points during a regular season and you didn’t make it to the Championship 4, then shame on you. You had a head start, and you still couldn’t do it,” Logano said. “But don’t say it’s not legit. You could have gone out there and won to get in. You didn’t. Just because it didn’t work for you, it doesn’t mean change the rules.”

It does, however, appear some sort of change is coming for the 2026 season. NASCAR put together a playoff committee consisting of former drivers, media partners, team owners, manufacturers, track representatives and independent media to determine if the playoff should change in 2026, such as potentially doing away with the one-race finale.

Mike Forde, NASCAR’s managing director of racing communications, revealed on last Wednesday’s “Hauler Talk” podcast that the playoff committee will have one final meeting next week. Forde said the plan will be to “discuss the shortlist of potential formats” before whittling it down to “one final format.”