‘This Is The Year You Can Have An Underdog’ Champion

Nascar on NBC analyst Jeff Burton knows a thing or two about competing for a Nascar Cup Series championship.

The Virginia native finished inside of the top five in the Cup Series standings four times in his 22-year career before becoming one of the sport’s leading commentators. Burton, who witnessed some of Nascar’s greatest changes during his driving career, explained how 2022 is one of the most unique seasons in Nascar history.

“I can’t imagine things will calm down,” Burton said prior to the start of the Nascar Playoffs. “I don’t know who the drivers and teams are that will step up. I don’t want to say anybody in this field can find themselves in Phoenix in the Championship 4, but I think this is the year you can have an underdog make it.”

Through 28 races, there are 18 winners in the Cup Series, an all-time high in the modern era. The playoffs have started, and two non-playoff drivers have won the first two races — Erik Jones and Bubba Wallace.

Burton had a feeling this could happen, and explained how it will change playoff drivers’ strategies throughout the final 10 weeks of the season in the midst of elimination rounds.

“There’s times that a non-playoff driver winning is an advantage to playoff drivers,” he said. “You didn’t get a new winner and now, you’re racing for points. As weird as it sounds, if you can’t win, it’s in the playoff driver’s best interest to have a guy who’s already won to win or to have someone else win because you didn’t lock someone into the next round and it creates an opportunity for you.

“It’s an interesting dynamic. It’ll be interesting to see how everybody navigates through these playoffs in regard to that.”

The playoff grid, which consists of 16 drivers, will narrow down to 12 after Saturday evening’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway. And for the 16 drivers who qualified for the playoffs, everything is on the line.

The 16-driver grid includes competitors from six different organizations. Joe Gibbs Racing, Hendrick Motorsports, Team Penske, Trackhouse Racing, Richard Childress Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing each have at least two drivers competing for the championship.

In the owner’s title battle, 23XI is also in the mix, with Bubba Wallace taking over the No. 45 car throughout the playoffs after Kurt Busch was diagnosed with a concussion after a qualifying wreck at Pocono Raceway in late July. Wallace won last weekend at Kansas Speedway, advancing the No. 45 team to the second round of the owner’s championship.

Thanks to the charter system, which has led to owners like Justin Marks and rapper Pitbull to start Trackhouse Racing, the playoff grid looks much different this year. Relatively young organizations now have a chance at winning the championship.

“There were a lot of people who were critical of the charters in its infancy,” Burton said. “The idea of the charter was to give the owners something that increases their worth. If you own the New York Giants, it’s not the property and all that, but it’s the fact that you own the New York Giants. You can sell that. We didn’t have that here.

“It created a system in which it’s very hard to make an investment in a team. I don’t think the charters have had the long-term effect that they were intended to have. We’re starting to see the charter prices go really high because the business of owning a Nascar race team is starting to make more sense.

“A guy like Richard Childress, who has always invested in his company to make it better, can now invest in it while believing he will create more value. It’s an important component. On top of that, we have to find a way for owners to control some cost in regards to putting a car on track. The more sense it makes to own this business, the more ability a car owner has to take a driver to come drive for them because it’s a competitive advantage.”

The price for available charters is approximately $20 million, ahead of a busy free agency period for drivers. With seven races remaining in the season, there will likely be multiple major announcements regarding drivers and teams acquiring charters before the 2022 Daytona 500.

The green flag for the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol waves at 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, Sept. 17 on the USA Network.