The 76th season of the NASCAR Cup Series will officially come to an end on Sunday afternoon at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Ariz., with the running of the 312-mile Cup Series Championship. The field will be full, but only four drivers will be competing for the title, having advanced through NASCAR’s quirky version of the playoffs, which began nine races ago, on Sept. 8 in Atlanta. At Phoenix on Sunday, the driver with the best finish will win it all. It’s racing’s one-and-done, pedal-to-the-metal version of the Final Four. Talk about pressure.
A postseason in NASCAR is nothing new, of course. The series stopped crowning champions based solely on their end-of-season point totals 20 years ago, with Kurt Busch winning the inaugural Chase for the Cup in 2004. The playoff format has gone through several changes of varying significance since then, enduring but never really thriving. It’s little secret in the sport that the Chase has failed to capture the hearts of racing fans—conventional wisdom holds that most would be just fine deciding championships the old-fashioned way. But more on that in a moment. For now, here’s a rundown of five of NASCAR’s top story lines for Sunday and beyond.
