“NEVER PHOENIX”: NASCAR veteran shares his picks for rotating championship racetracks amid recent development

Renowned NASCAR spotter Brett Griffin shared his thoughts on the playoffs rotation in the Championship 4 race. Ever since the playoffs started, fans and experts wanted the Championship 4 venue to shuffle every year, but according to Griffin, the venue should "NEVER" be Phoenix.

In 2024, the criticism against Phoenix went up multiple-fold as internal chatters within NASCAR started debating about rotating the final championship race. According to Adam Stern, the motorsport reporter of Sports Business Journal, NASCAR might go beyond Phoenix Raceway and Homestead-Miami Speedway for the final race.

".@NASCAR is debating internally about whether to start rotating the championship race to different markets in the coming years, and the venues being considered would go beyond just Phoenix Raceway and Homestead-Miami Speedway, per COO Steve O'Donnell," Stern wrote.

Griffin, quote-tweeting the post, shared his thoughts, and wrote,

"Fans and everyone I know has literally been begging for this since the playoffs started."

With this, he also shared his four desired venues, and they were:

"Homestead, Darlington, Las Vegas and Kansas."

However, Brett Griffin, like many others in the sport, was not a fan of Phoenix. Hence, he wrote,

"NEVER PHOENIX."

The Phoenix Raceway at Phoenix hosted the season-ending race of NASCAR for the last five seasons, starting in 2020. The venue inherited the bragging rights to host the final race from Homestead-Miami and fans and experts alike were not happy with this.

Notably, the Phoenix Raceway will host the final Championship 4 race in 2025 as the schedule has already been released. Therefore, any changes that might take place are unlikely to come before 2026.

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NASCAR to reportedly review playoff format amid massive criticism

After Joey Logano claimed his second NASCAR Cup Series championship in three years, and Team Penske picked their third owner's title in as many years, the NASCAR playoff system has come under massive scrutiny. Fans and experts were unhappy about the current playoff format and they called for a change.

Addressing this, NASCAR is reportedly moving towards a change in the format which could be reflected in 2025, 2026, or the coming years.

According to Adam Stern of Sports Business Journal, a senior executive team member said,

"Topics that should be examined include whether a win should automatically qualify a driver for the playoffs, as is the case now, and possible changes like whether the regular-season champion should get locked into one of the latter rounds of the playoffs, whether the final round should have more than four drivers, and whether the final round should be contested over multiple races instead of just one."

NASCAR Cup Series driver Joey Logano. Credit: Imagn Images

Team Penske's Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney have come under massive criticism after they ended their season with poor finishes. Despite the championship, Logano's average finish position in 2024 was 17.111, which is regarded as the worst statistic for a winner.