NASCAR Xfinity Series will decide its championship final four at Martinsville Speedway in a race that is always one of the most..
Saturday, November 2, 2024
Go ahead and mark that day on your calendars because that is the night the NASCAR Xfinity Series will decide its championship final four at Martinsville Speedway in a race that is always one of the most dramatic shows in all of motorsports.
It certainly was last year.
But this weekend at Kansas Speedway starts the process that leads up to that night and the Xfinity Series playoffs has no shortage of storylines and big personalities that will converge over the next seven weeks to the finale at Phoenix Raceway.
Cole Custer’s pursuit of back-to-back
Justin Allgaier’s latest run
The Austin Hill Show
Parker Kligerman’s swan song
Shane Van Gisbergen’s margin of error
And that’s just a snapshot of the prominent narratives that begins in the heartland.
First, there is a top seeded contender in Shane Van Gisbergen, who doesn’t even know how the next seven weeks work.
And it’s fair, because to his point, it’s a convoluted system.
“Yeah, the playoff system is crazy,” Van Gisbergen said during media day on Wednesday. “I studied it last night trying to understand how it works. It’s the most overcomplicated racing series I have ever been a part of but I think it’s cool.
“It’s great for the fans and watching the Cup race at Bristol and seeing the pressure it but the drivers under, it’s wild.”
Let’s try to simplify it for SVG.
The rules for the playoffs largely remain the same as the regular season but in much shorter bursts. The first two rounds are three races each and a playoff eligible driver can advance to the next round with a win in the same way a regular season win advances a driver into the playoffs to begin with.
The first round is 12 drivers, then to eight and then a one-race highest finisher take all finale. The bottom four winless drivers in the standings without a win gets eliminated after each three-race round.
The seeding is determined by playoff points earned during the regular season and they continue to carry over from round to round after each reset albeit with the points also earned for wins and stage wins in that round as well.
To Van Gisbergen’s point, it’s a lot but it becomes intuitive after watching it unfold, certainly over the course of several seasons.
