NASCAR Playoffs Shift Gears: How Do Fans Feel About New Format?

Monday Morning Pit-Stop returns as your weekly dose of NASCAR news from OutKick.com and Fox News Digital. If you prefer a standard recap, check out ESPN, assuming they still understand the sport exists.

Five races are down, five remain in the Cup Series postseason. It feels like we just started these playoffs, yet this new version of The Chase is nearing its finish line.

Serious question: How do we feel about it? This marks the first year NASCAR has not used its usual win-and-advance format in over a decade. I am genuinely curious how everyone feels. Have you watched more? Less? The same? Do these races possess the fire they once held when every third race was an elimination event? Has it made any difference at all for you?

I will be honest: I miss the old format. I knew I would. Chase Briscoe won yesterday at Las Vegas. Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick crossed the line after wrecking, following a crash where Larson hit the wall trying to chase down Briscoe on the final turn.

It was a decent race with a fun finish, but I feel like it has lost some juice. The stakes do not feel quite as high to me. I still enjoy it, yet these playoffs, or Chase, whatever NASCAR wants us to call them, have just felt sort of neutered.

And yes, I stole that word from Tony Stewart. He is currently viral for eyebrow-raising comments he made about NASCAR earlier this year. You will see where this leads.

Kasey Kahne has come out of retirement in an amazing twist. A scorned wife went after a NASCAR driver after she seduced her husband. This is true story material. Brad Keselowski has been pushed out the door by his own team, which makes no sense given that the team stunk before he arrived and was actually respectable over the past few years.

Dummies. I am not surprised, though, given his partners are associated with my Red Sox. They run just about as poorly as any professional sports team on the planet right now. Four tires, a splash of Sunoco racing fuel, and maybe a few more horses for Tony Stewart make Monday Morning Pit-Stop live today. This is the NASCAR's Been Neutered edition.

There is smoke here. We will break down yesterday's race at Vegas soon. I promise. It was an OK race with a decent finish that probably would have been a lot better if the cars were not horrible. Take a look at Saturday's O'Reilly Series ending to see what I mean.

But first, let us dive into these comments from Tony Stewart that made the internet rounds over the weekend. Tony retired from full-time Cup racing in 2016 and has never been known to mince words. I agree with a lot of his takes, but not others. For instance, he weirdly bashed fans and the media for mourning Kyle Busch earlier this year because he claimed we did not care about Kyle Busch the person when he was alive. It was odd.

So no, I do not always agree with the man they call Smoke. But I do 100 percent agree with him here.

One door closes and another opens! "I'll be honest, I don't even watch anymore," Stewart told the Oil and Whiskey podcast. "It is, it is so neutered. I mean, they're driving cars with 500 horsepower. When I, at the peak when I was running, we were at 875 horsepower, those things. And then they cut the nuts off of them. We went down to a 775 horsepower package and I was miserable. I'm like, these things are pieces of s–t."

"I'm going to do a commercial tomorrow with Dodge and Ram and we're promoting a truck that has 777 horsepower that you can buy off a showroom floor. And you can go to Talladega to the truck race and outrun that thing by theory with more power from a street truck that you can buy."

"It's like, NASCAR, wake the f–k up. What are we doing?"

Yeah, I mean, it is tough to argue with Tony Stewart on anything he just said. It is all true. It is all correct.

Tony is actually getting back behind the wheel later this month. He will race the No. 25 Ram for Kaulig Racing in the Truck Series event at Talladega on Oct. 23. This comes as a shock because Tony notoriously HATED restrictor plate races when he drove. He mocked them all the time. Now he is back to promote Dodge. Everyone has a price!

Drivers making stunning comebacks are everywhere right now. Where did Kasey Kahne come from? Dirty air, a dirty team, and a really dirty affair have marked this sport recently. According to Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic, Kasey Kahne, who is 46 years old, will drive a Spire truck full-time next season. I have no earthly idea why.

Kahne has not raced since 2018. He has only made six Truck Series starts over his entire career. Fans might forget that the 31-time race winner retired at the end of the 2018 season due to health reasons, specifically pointing towards dehydration as a major factor. Bianchi noted that Truck races are the shortest of all three series, so it makes sense for Kahne to return there. Personally, I hope we get more commercials with NASCAR's biggest heartthrob back behind the wheel next season.

We had it so good back then, and we just pissed it all away. Remember how great NASCAR commercials used to be? Any commercial, really. Now they are all Ozempic ads and Big Pharma crap. It is disgusting. What a fall from grace for the industry.

Yesterday's race ended in a fashion that feels extra special because you get to see Kyle Larson racing against Kyle Busch's iconic No. 5 Kellogg's scheme from back in the day. The finish was solid, but the race itself suffered. Could anyone make an actual pass? Not really. Dirty air still rules everything unfortunately. It is undefeated in this Next Gen car, and I fear it will always be so.

Ooooooooooof. Just a brutal clip to watch. Do not let Tony see it! He will freak out over the violence on display. Brad Keselowski is also leaving his own RFK race team after this month ends. Pretty shocking news hit the NASCAR world late last week regarding this departure. Brad Keselowski joined Roush-Fenway Racing five years ago and turned that place around really well. They were pretty irrelevant before he arrived, yet this year they had two of the three cars in the Chase.

Brad said his five-year contract expires this year, which is part of why he is leaving. Obviously there is a lot more meat on this bone because the results have been good for everyone involved. Rumblings suggest the organization wanted him to transition into a managerial role while he preferred keeping race seats. If that is the case, I am with Brad completely. He is a NASCAR champ and a future Hall of Famer. If you want to keep racing then keep racing. Do not let anyone else tell you otherwise!

That wraps up today's news cycle for now. It was a solid week despite being weird in spots. On the way out, there is another bizarre story regarding Jennifer Jo Cobb owing the wife of spotter Clayton Hughes a whopping $850,000 after she won a civil court case. She accused Cobb of seducing her husband before their ultimate divorce in 2021. That is most expensive sex ever if you ask me! See y'all at Charlotte.