A rant, then history: Was the Cup Seriesending always exciting?

FIRST THE RANT: Like a lot of you, my NASCAR Cup season ended with an awful pit in my stomach. A storybook ending was dashed, not by the playoff format, but by NASCAR’s dreaded (at least to me) overtime system.

Had the (what a dumb name) NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race finished at 312 laps – its advertised distance – Denny Hamlin would be our 2025 Champion, with a win for his dying father making for one of the best stories in the series’ history.

Sadly – especially for the Hamlin family but almost as much so for the rest of us – NASCAR stepped in, to make sure things were as exciting as possible for everybody, and screwed it all up.

Clarifications: I am a big Kyle Larson fan, and I really don’t hate the playoff system, but I think “overtime” is up there with charters, stage racing, and driver development programs at the top of what’s wrong with the sport.

Anywhere other than in an organization where one family controls everything, people would get fired for changes that don’t work. Not here.

I started as a race fan with NASCAR 63 years ago next spring, and that part of the sport still has a hold on me, although it’s much looser than it used to be, and I suspect it will loosen even more after Phoenix. (Check Frank’s Loose Lug Nuts at the end of this piece).

NOW ON TO THE HISTORY:

As NASCAR prepares to fiddle with the playoff format for next season, trying to come up with “something that will last a long time,” you can be sure one objective will be to come as close as possible to having the championship come down to the last turn of the last lap.

That’s the mindset in Daytona these days (fully approved by the TV broadcasters, of course). But it ain’t always been that way.

OK, I know. Those of us who pine for “the old days” no longer matter, and I guess it’s for good reason. I’m less likely to buy what’s being sold during those telecasts, and I’m a lot less likely to be part of the audience in 20 years. Still, geezers need to be heard doing something other than snoring, so here’s a little historical review, which I hope you’ll find interesting.

1949-72 should qualify as “a long time,” and since the latter part of that period encompasses my early years of infatuation with NASCAR, that’s where I’ll go to explore the way things were and what we thought about them. I remember being aware of the points championship, and I paid attention to it, but I don’t remember it as my be-all and end-all. Especially, I don’t remember feeling cheated when the battle for the championship didn’t go down to the wire . . . and it usually didn’t.

Even more a contrast to today for much of that period, the last race on the schedule wasn’t chosen for its ability to provide a last-race battle. Much of the time, it was no big deal at all.

Let’s review:

That first season, 1949, only had eight races (and no driver ran more than six of them), and when things wound down at North Wilkesboro in October, Red Byron had enough of a lead that he could finish 21^st and still be well ahead of points runner-up Lee Petty (who finished the race in second as well) and third-place Bob Flock (who won). I doubt that attendance at the finale was boosted by a hot championship fight.

In 1950, future champion Bill Rexford and future runner-up Fireball Roberts both fell out of the race and had poor finishes at Hillsboro, so there was no battle to the wire, but what 1950 really pointed out what happens when you base points on the purse paid for a race (which they did then) – the more money, the more points. Bill Rexford won the championship driving 17 of the 19 races, while Roberts finished fairly close behind, but he only raced nine times. The difference was that Roberts was second in the Southern 500 and Rexford fourth, which resulted in the former getting 250 more points, almost as much as any other race on the scheduled paid to win. Darlington’s purse was more than four times that of the next highest paying race and nearly seven times that of the lowest-paying event, with the points reflecting that disparity.

Johnny Mantz, who won the 500, only drove three times that year and still managed to finish sixth in points. His point total was more than twice that of Herb Thomas, who drove 13 races and was 11^th in the standings.

At least North Wilkesboro and Hillsboro (the town would become Hillsborough later) were significant tracks to NASCAR – Bill France had helped build both, along with bootlegging buddies. In 1951, a string of minimum-purse events finished the year, the last of which was at the three-quarter-mile Lakeview Speedway in Mobile, Ala. The year before, Lakeview had advertised its Gulf Coast Championship as “The Largest Stock Car Race Ever Witnessed in Alabama,” but the NASCAR event paid only $50 above the lowest purse of that year.

That’s kind of how it went throughout the ‘50s. Races at tracks like North Wilkesboro, Hillsboro, or Lakewood in Atlanta, might pay more than the minimum allowed, while others like Wilson, the Greensboro Fairgrounds, and other races at Hillsboro and Lakewood, were pretty much at the minimum.

It probably should be said that, in those days, having NASCAR come to town was something of a big deal regardless, but still, these end-of-the-year races hardly stood out. In 1955, when Hillsboro closed out the season, there had been about 10 races on the 45-event schedule that paid significantly more.

(Another thing that happened during the ‘50s was that NASCAR started ending the Grand National/Cup season at the end of October, then running some races in November or even December that counted toward the next season.)

I didn’t work out the points for each season, but the champion’s margin seldom was small enough for there to have been a change based on the outcome of that final race, especially with so many of those races being smaller events awarding fewer points. More points were awarded to smaller races starting in 1952, but there was still quite a difference. In 1955, for instance, a race paying a total of $4,000 – like most – awarded 200 points to the winner, while one paying $25,000 – Darlington was paying out slightly more than that – awarded 1,250 points.

things began to change in the ‘60s, with more tracks paying purses well above the minimum, although the “little guys” remained in the majority. By 1965, out of 55 races, 33 still paid at or near the minimum, but the number paying $10,000 or more had risen to 18.

There was still a good chance, though, that the season would end with a minor event. The newly built Atlanta Motor Speedway was last on the schedule in 1960, but Hillsboro was back in that spot the next year, and Jacksonville, Fla., and Moyock, N.C., came along shortly thereafter.

In 1965, Rockingham became another new track to occupy the final schedule slot, and Texas World Speedway would follow four years later. In between, though, we had Jefferson, Ga., and Asheville-Weaverville, N.C., both semi-major events but hardly places to spotlight the season’s end.

In just about every one of those years, there was little or no chance that the championship would be decided at those races, either.

The last “little” season-ender was in 1970 at Langley Speedway in Hampton, Va., when Bobby Allison won a 250-lapper (a bit more than the minimum purse) but trailed Bobby Isaac by far too much to catch him for the championship, even with Isaac finishing 23^rd.

The next year, College Station, Texas, was back at the end of the schedule, and the year after that, the “Modern Era” began, and all those little races disappeared. NASCAR’s last 100-miler was run at Hickory Speedway the weekend before Labor Day Weekend in 1971.

So why am I rambling on about all this? Well, I want to illustrate that, when a NASCAR race was truly something special to attend, you didn’t need a tight points race or even a major race to hold your interest. My first race was in April, hardly a time for points to be a big story, but it was a great race. It didn’t need everybody to finish on the lead lap, and since a lot of cars didn’t finish at all, cheering for your driver to survive until the end was an element of the excitement.

You could spot your favorite car out on the track, too, because it looked the same every week, and the crowds were small enough that you could probably talk with your driver afterwards. All of that added up to an experience you wanted again.

How did that soapbox get in here? (I’m a geezer, so I can use that expression, but who has any idea what a “soap box” really is, anymore?)

Moving from the rant back to the history, here are a couple of nuggets I dredged up that you might find worth the read:

We’re used to Daytona being NASCAR’s 800-lb gorilla for purse money these days, but it hasn’t always been that way. In 1949, at the beginning, Langhorne had the highest purse, with the Daytona Beach-Road Course in a three-way tie for second. Darlington became the undisputed king when it opened in 1950.

Things stayed that way until the new Daytona track opened in 1959, paying a bit more than Darlington – but they were close. The next year, Charlotte jumped into first with the World 600, with Daytona and Darlington second and third. Darlington actually edged back into second place in 1962, but Daytona got a boost into first the following year and has stayed there, eventually helped a lot by TV revenue.

Of course, the races above are the Daytona 500, World 600, and Southern 500. Daytona and Darlington were both miserly with their second races for years, and in 1961, the purse for Daytona’s Firecracker 250 seemed so bad to the Pettys that Richard skipped the race and instead ran an East Coast Late Model race at Lincoln Speedway, my Pennsylvania neighbor.

Every time I go back through this history stuff, I wish the rules allowed any brand of car to enter. When Frank Mundy won the season-ending race at Mobile, Ala., in 1951, he was driving a Studebaker, and he was followed across the line by a Hudson, a Packard, an Olds, and another Packard. Buddy Shuman was sixth in a Ford. There was a Plymouth farther back, and who knows what else – the surviving results don’t list a make for six drivers. At other races back then, you could fine Cadillacs, Nashes, Lincolns, Chevys, Chryslers, Dodges, Mercury’s, Kaisers, Henry Js, and others.

Maybe the fact that a lot of those have disappeared says that, “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday,” wasn’t quite as ironclad as we thought.

Still, they tried, including my favorite, the German-made Goliath that ran at Riverside in 1958, alongside a couple of Citroens and a Renault. The Goliath finished 27^th, more than 100 miles behind, but a print ad afterward proudly proclaimed that it was first in its class.

Can’t blame ‘em for trying.

Frank’s Loose Lug Nuts

My warm-up for the disappointment of Phoenix was a two-hour drive Saturday to Birdsboro, Pa., and the Pagoda Motorcycle Club’s oval track (about 1/6 mile clay, also sometimes called Pagoda Speedway). On tap was a 75-lap enduro race, plus “Junk Car” races for “small” and “large” cars. If you got there early enough, you also got to see motorcycles races, at no additional charge.

Pagoda had to move its entire operation after last season, so this facility is brand new, and it’s quite impressive. Motocross is probably the main activity, then the oval. Prior to this year, cars only ran two or three times a season, but promoter Richard Tobias, who also operates Kutztown’s Action Track USA and builds several varieties of racing “kit” cars, has begun holding events more often, and a schedule of about 10 races looks to be the norm going forward. There’s a small bleacher “grandstand,” but most seating is for lawn chairs.

Car counts weren’t great – about 35 for the three divisions – but on a small track you can get away with that; the “small” junk car feature started only five after four others had mechanical issues during hot laps.

It’s racing, and everybody takes it seriously, but it’s also fun, with a total purse for the show that wouldn’t pay a Cup team’s breakfast bill. All that leads to a variety of entertainment missing in the major leagues of NASCAR. For instance:

• One car ran two or three laps backwards when turning around after a spin proved problematic. Its speed wasn’t much slower than it had been going forward.
• Another – front-wheel drive, fortunately – drove three or four laps with the rear wheels completely off the ground, due to two of the tires used to mark the inside of the track having gotten stuck under the rear of the racer.
• The enduro winner had “Jesus Saves . . . I Spend” on the car. The spending part apparently was on the spray paint cans that had applied the signage. The third-place finisher had the only “professional” paint job and was nicely painted as a Wood Brothers #21.

There are several varieties of junk car racing, and this one isn’t my favorite, but it was still entertaining. The cars run several laps (maybe 5), and then stop in one turn, where the event becomes a demo derby. I’d rather see the racing, but I understand the wrecking has its fans.

Concessions were – I thought – better than at NASCAR tracks and about half the cost, or less. Other than the usual variety of t-shirts and sweatshirts, there was little effort to take more of your money once you’d paid $20 to get in and bought your burger.

There actually are some people who are enduro/demo/junk car regular competitors and have fans, and I did miss having something other than what was sprayed on the side of the car to determine who I would cheer for, but I thoroughly enjoyed my evening at Pagoda and will almost certainly return. Phoenix vs. Birdsboro? You can pick your poison, and I’ll pick mine.

Frank Buhrman

Credit (cover): Kyle Larson with the Bill France 2025 and 2021 NASCAR Cup Series Championship trophy after finishing first of the NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 drivers to win the NASCAR Cup Series Championship at Phoenix Raceway on November 02, 2025 in Avondale, Arizona. (Photo by Chris Graythen / Getty Images)