Emperor Lemon masterfully deconstructs how artificial chaos in sports governance inevitably collapses into a rigid, gameable order. It is a profound critique of how institutional engineering can inadvertently stifle the very competition it seeks to revitalize.
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Nascar's Most Chaotic Driver.Added:
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another iconic moment in NASCAR history.
Now, ordinarily, I would just explain what's about to happen on screen here, but today we're going to try something a little different. What you're watching is the final lap of the 2012 Nationwide Series race at Daytona. And if you haven't seen this before, I'd like you to try and predict which of these drivers ends up winning. To make things easier, let's take a look at some of our challengers. Leading the field is the 2004 Cup Series champion Kurt Bush. With no one in front of him, he has the shortest pathway to victory. Right behind Kurt is his brother Kyle Bush, a future two-time Cup champion and winner of more than 200 races across NASCAR's top three series. Over a hundred of those wins came in the series he's currently competing in at this moment.
So, there's pretty good odds that this might be one of them. Gaining on the two Bush brothers is Joey Logano, a future threetime Cup champion and the youngest winner in NASCAR history. With his current momentum, he should be able to pass the two leaders before the finish line. Logano is being pushed by Trevor Bane, who lacks the career accolades of the three drivers in front of him, but does know his way around Daytona. In fact, he enters today's race as the defending winner of NASCAR's most prestigious event, the Daytona 500. And finally, rounding out the top five with a full head of steam is Tony Stewart, the reigning Cup Series champion and the winner of this exact event the last four consecutive seasons. It seems like no matter what happens, Tony always finds a way to come out of this thing on top.
These are your contenders. some of the most elite talent this sport has ever seen. A Daytona victory is at stake. And remember, everyone wants to win at Daytona. All that's left to do is see who crosses the line first.
A squeeze to the outside wall. Trouble in the corner. Hard vicious crash. Who gets through to win the race? Caution flag has just been called. The race leader is James Butcher in the 30 car.
So, when everyone was predicting the winner, did any of you happen to pick the guy in 11th place who cruised to victory after every single driver in front of him crashed? This is James Busher. Before today, he had never won a NASCAR race, and most people had no idea who he was. But now, he enters the record books as a Daytona winner, besting some of the greatest drivers to ever race in the sport. At the end of the day, all the talent, experience, and championships didn't end up mattering.
Today's winner just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
>> Watch this.
>> Take a look at this real time. Now, they're coming down the backstretch.
>> They fan out. They're at least five wide right here. Mike Skinner's going to make some contact with Mike Wallace.
>> NASCAR is chaotic. It's probably the most chaotic motorsport in the world.
You'd think that a racing series where drivers only have to worry about turning one direction would be pretty simple and straightforward, but that's hardly the case at all. In fact, preposterous stuff like this happens all the time in NASCAR. If you watch long enough, you'll eventually come to expect it. But how exactly did this sport get so chaotic?
It's a long story. But luckily, there is one driver who can help us navigate through this whole mess. Because all along in this very race, an agent of chaos has been lurking. Disorder seems to follow him wherever he goes. And in the next several years, his presence will usher in an age of anarchy that no one knew was possible. It turns out that chaos happens to be the subject of considerable scientific study. Its properties are especially important to industries attempting to predict the future. Understanding chaos could provide major breakthroughs in finance, logistics, and numerous other disciplines that society depends on to function. Perhaps the most famous principle of chaos theory is the butterfly effect, which dictates how tiny changes in a system may produce drastic differences in the future. The implications of this are profound and have far-reaching consequences in just about anything you can imagine, including stock car racing. One of NASCAR's biggest butterfly effects was set in motion during the 1969 Tallaladega 500. Conveniently, this race also offers us a look into the chaotic origins of the sport itself. From the very beginning, NASCAR has served as a battleground for the eternal struggle between law and disorder. The entire history of NASCAR can be traced back to something frequently found at all of its races, drunk people.
In 1919, American lawmakers decided that alcohol was causing too much chaos around the nation. So, they passed a constitutional amendment banning the sale of all liquor. Unwilling to depart from their way of life. The drunks sought what they desired from the black market. In the southeast, this market would be fulfilled by moonshiners who forged their own bootleg distilleries far away from city limits. Once the contraband was produced, it had to be transported back into town for sale and distribution. The problem was that the road back to civilization was often infested with cops waiting to catch any illicit deliveries. Drivers soon found the solution, upgrading their personal vehicles to outrun police cruisers.
After decades of racing the cops, the Moonshiners started racing each other.
Unsanctioned competition started to pop up around the country to see who had the most power under the hood. But these early races were often dysfunctional with little to no oversight. Enter Bill France, a man with a vision for the future of stock car racing. Starting in 1948, he helps consolidate these disorganized events into a national touring series with guaranteed payouts and a scoring system to crown an overall champion. This new league would be known as NASCAR. From the very beginning, it wasn't much more than organized chaos.
So, what does all this have to do with One Summer Day in 1969?
Well, the complex interplay between order and chaos would continue shaping NASCAR far into the future. The new sport proved quite popular with drivers and spectators alike. As the sole owner and chairman of the venture, Big Bill had found himself with a lucrative proposition. If stock car racing kept growing, it would pay off very well for him and his family. But how do you convince the average Joe to watch a bunch of cars drive in circles? The answer, build the biggest, fastest circle in the world. Bill France first saw that NASCAR's path to prosperity existed on a fine line between competition and spectacle. And so he began to invest heavily in the entertainment value of the sport. He constructed new circuits that were borderline experimental. Higher speeds, bigger accidents, more risk, and more reward. This all culminated with NASCAR's ultimate behemoth, Tallaladega Super Speedway, scheduled to open in the September of 1969.
But before the inaugural race, there was a problem. The racing surface was too fast for the tires to handle. After numerous blowouts in practice, most drivers feared conditions were too dangerous to race. And just like that, NASCAR had reached an impass. The quest for spectacle had driven a wedge between the competitors and the sanctioning body. Something had to give. And when confronted with the possibility of cancing the event, Bill France insisted that the show must go on. When faced with a chaotic situation, NASCAR had decided to double down. What followed was to this day the only large-scale driver boycott of any NASCAR event.
Nearly every star competitor refused to show up for race day. Their absence would create a unique opportunity to fill up the empty field. Bill France would open up the grid to drivers from NASCAR's lower divisions who would now be racing for life-changing amounts of money. This is where the butterfly effect truly begins because one of these drivers was a 23-year-old Richard Childris who would use his winnings to open up his very own race shop and begin a full-time racing career. Over the next decade, he becomes a top 10 driver in the sport before retiring from competition and managing his race team from the pitbox. Replacing Childress in the number three car is one of NASCAR's most promising young prospects. His name is Dale Nhard. It's strange to think how all the history that followed, the dominance, the drama, the triumph, and the tragedy, came so close to never existing. But such as the nature of chaos, it can produce effects in the future that may seem unthinkable in the present. In NASCAR's case, a set of faulty tires and a driver boycott would set in motion a direct chain of events that eventually led to the sport's darkest day more than 30 years later.
Following Nhard's fatal accident at Daytona, his now iconic number three would be unofficially retired across NASCAR's major series. As a show of respect, the other race teams would purposely avoid assigning the number to any of their cars. That privilege would be left to Richard Childress, who had the final say on whether it would ever return.
After more than eight years, car number three would be resurrected at what seems like a random race in Iowa. But for Richard Childress, today is a special occasion. All this time, he's been saving the number for precisely one driver. This particular race happens to be the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut of his grandson, Austin Dylan. And as the world of NASCAR got to know the heir to the children's throne, they would soon discover that chaos runs in the family.
>> Dylan goes a three in front of the pack.
They're all collected.
Richard Childris's grandson trying to return the three to NASCAR victory lane.
>> Thank you, Jesus, baby.
>> While the return of the three car was met with excitement, some question whether its new driver was worthy of carrying on such a legacy. His handpicked opportunity seemed to stand in direct contrast to the bluecollar grid of Nhard, who had cut his teeth for years before his big break. By this point, the children's had become quite wealthy, and when it came to Austin Dylan, the phrase silver spoon certainly came to mind. However, unfazed by the doubters, the young driver began working his way up the ranks. Just one year later, Dylan would score his first NASCAR victory at the age of 20. The following season, he would take home the truck series championship, beating some of the sports most wy veterans. Dylan was then promoted to the Nationwide Series, taking the number three with him. Despite the stiffer competition, he would again reach victory lane and finish third in the championship. Now, at this point, you might be wondering, where's the chaos? And thus far, nothing about Dylan's career appears out of the ordinary. If anything, he looks like a real straight shooter with a bright future ahead of him. But the following season is where things start to get weird. The 2013 Nationwide Championship came down to a tight points battle between Dylan and Sam Hornish Jr. In the end, Dylan would prevail by a narrow margin, and in doing so, earned himself a rather dubious distinction. It was the first time in any of NASCAR's three major series where the champion did not win a single race during the entire season. No one knew it at the time, but this event may have played a hand in opening up Pandora's box. Because unbeknownst to everyone else, the sport of NASCAR is about to change in a drastic way to prevent anything like this from happening again.
So, how exactly do you crown a champion in racing? Well, the most intuitive solution seemed from F1 to Mario Kart is to award points for each event and tally them up at the end of the season. The driver who scored the most points is your champion. This was pretty much how NASCAR's champions were determined over the first half century of the sport's existence. The precise method of awarding points would vary from year to year, but the general logic remained the same. Show up to the races, finish well, and you'll find yourself in the championship hunt. It's quite simple really. There's a reason why every other motorsport in the world works this way.
But somewhere down the line, NASCAR decided that the time had come to reinvent the wheel. The system they had just wasn't chaotic enough. The conversation began during the 2003 Cup Series season, which saw two drivers dominate the spotlight. The first was Ryan Newman, who collected a season high eight victories, but seemed to suffer just as many catastrophic results throughout the year. The second was Matt Kensith, who won just a single time early on, but ran consistently near the top of the grid all season long. Looking at both of these results in a vacuum, it's hard to say who was the more deserving champion. This question is quite abstract and depends on your subjective interpretation of what really matters in racing. But in this case, NASCAR's point system determined Kensith as the heavy winner, while Newman finished a distance sixth. So NASCAR's point system favors consistency over winning. Is that really such a big deal?
Well, it was a big deal for some people.
And by some people, I mean the people in charge of NASCAR. During this time, the sport is riding on an unprecedented wave of popularity. Jeff Gordon is hosting Saturday Night Live and stock car racing has infiltrated the minds of the masses.
But with this success came a new level of paranoia among NASCAR's executives who were now terrified of anything that might scare off the casual viewers, such as a driver running away with the championship using steady conservative racecraft. And so starting in 2004, the decision was made to overhaul the triedand-true format into something more chaotic, introducing the Chase for the Cup, which took the existing point system and added a reset after the first 2/3 of the schedule. From there, the top 10 or so drivers would compete for the championship over the final 10 races.
So, no more runaway champions. If you want to prove you're the best, you now have to defend your title in crunch time. Sounds exciting, right? A closer points battle means more contenders and more action. So, let's take a look at all the exciting new champions that the Chase helped create. Guys like Curt Bush, Tony Stewart, Jimmy Johnson, Jimmy Johnson, Jimmy Johnson, Jimmy Johnson, and Jimmy Johnson. So, while trying to stop someone from leading the whole season, NASCAR ended up causing the same guy to win every season. It turns out that when you try to add chaos to a system, order can still emerge in strange and unforeseen ways. In this case, Johnson's race team had deduced that since the final 10 events now mattered so much more than the rest of the season, the optimal strategy was to invest all their resources into those 10 tracks. The team became unbeatable in the chase and ushered in the most dominant dynasty in the history of the sport. It was so dominant that people started tuning out in droves and NASCAR had entered its first prolonged period of decline. So, lesson learned, right?
The chaos experiment had clearly failed and maybe it's time for the sport to go back to basics. But, as was the case with a certain other dilemma from long ago, NASCAR decided to double down. It is from this point that stock car racing as we know it completely exits the realm of normality. If you've been following along so far, it's time to reach up there and pull those belts tight one more time, you're about to witness what happens when a motorsport takes the wrong turn.
In 2014, Austin Dylan was introduced to the Cup Series and the Cup Series was introduced to the NASCAR playoffs.
Say goodbye to the boring dynasties and zero win champions of the past. And say hello to eliminations, multi-round resets, and the winner take all finale.
A 16 driver cluster [ __ ] so convoluted and contrived that we're still struggling to understand it. What happens from here is going to get very confusing. But luckily for us, we have Austin Dylan to help us navigate this new landscape of chaos. Consider him as your friendly guide who we can use to answer any questions about what the hell is going on in front of you. Over the next 12 seasons, he will be far from the most important character in our story.
Sometimes you may forget he's even there at all, but trust me, by the end of this wild ride, he will have played his part in it.
Dylan's full-time Cup career began with a bright spot as he put the threecar on pole for the Daytona 500. After this, however, he would quickly learn that winning in the cup series is exponentially harder than in the lower divisions. In his rookie campaign, he fails to win a race and fails to qualify for the 16-man playoffs. In this new era of racing, winning might as well be everything. Just one victory in any of the first 26 races will automatically qualify you for the playoffs.
Furthermore, winning in any of the first three rounds will automatically advance you to the next one. We'll dive deeper into the implications of this later, but all you need to know for now is that to win the championship, you're practically required to win races. In the very first year of the NASCAR playoffs, a driver with zero wins nearly wins the championship. Funnily enough, it's Austin Dylan's teammate, Ryan Newman, who experiences the inverse of his 2003 season. Running off of pure consistency, he makes it to the final four without a single victory. It was entirely possible that the playoffs would immediately crown the exact type of champion it was designed to prevent. Fortunately for NASCAR, Kevin Harvick would edge out Newman at the last moment and spare them the embarrassment. But the fact that this scenario was even a possibility served as a bad omen for the new system.
Even more alarming was the way that Newman made it to the finals. In the penultimate race, needing one more position to advance, Newman doors slammed Kyle Larson in the final corner to take the spot by force. The move signaled a shocking breakdown in etiquette. It went far beyond a racing incident and instead came off as cheap and desperate. Few realized at the time that this was only the beginning. The playoffs didn't just change the way that points were calculated. They were altering the fundamental spirit of competition in the sport. It started out small, but soon enough there'd be no telling the depths drivers were willing to stoop in the name of winning.
>> I'm afraid if it was that ugly these last couple weeks, it's going to get really ugly next week.
In 2015, Austin Dylan is still searching for his first cup win. He doesn't get it and actually finishes worse in the standings than in his rookie campaign.
All of this, however, would be overshadowed because when people think of Austin Dylan in the year 2015, they will be reminded of precisely one moment. There's an old adage among professional drivers that you don't know whether you're cut out for racing until you've had your first bad crash. As it turns out, Dylan's first memorable moment in Cup was an airborne collision at Tallaladega. For most drivers, this would easily qualify as the most severe accident of their career. But fate had other plans for the three car.
In NASCAR, there are bad wrecks, there are scary wrecks, and then there are wrecks where you seriously doubt if the driver will ever step out of the car again. On a suffocating July night at Daytona, the Spore would experience one of these rare moments where everyone feared for the worst. This whole race felt like a fever dream after a rain delay pushed the start time to nearly midnight. As the laps ticked further into the early morning, the drivers growing fatigue set the stage for a chaotic series of events. In the final run to the finish, the entire field is pushed beyond the edge of control. When you have a blob of 30 or so cars traveling around 200 mph, that's a pretty fragile system. And when fragile systems meet chaos, they tend to break down. In NASCAR, this situation is known as the big one. In a typical season, you can expect to see several of these pileups, which occur most often at Daytona and Tallaladega, the super speedways. The reason for this can actually be traced back to a rare instance where NASCAR tried to reduce chaos. The cars are bunched up like this because they have restrictor plates which prevent anyone from pulling away from the pack. The cars need restrictor plates because without them they'd be going too fast. The cars were going too fast because in 1987, one of them lifted off and tore a giant hole in the catch fence. Spectator safety happens to be one area where NASCAR prefers to play it safe. So, they tried to restore order to Super Speedway Racing. But it turns out that when you try to add order to a system, chaos can still emerge in strange and unforeseen ways. The funny thing about NASCAR is that if you watch long enough, everything always comes full circle.
>> Checker flag right here. Big wreck in your mirror. Big wreck in your mirror.
Oh my god, that look awful. When the big one strikes, you get to witness one of the most expensive physics simulations in the world. Sometimes the randomness of the system will produce an outcome that you never imagined was possible.
Austin Dylan Chevy was bumped at the precise angle to launch him over the top of the pack and into the catch fence.
The car went from 190 to a complete stop in about a second. It's moments like this that you really appreciate the courage it takes to be a professional driver, knowing that each and every time you strap into one of these machines, you may never leave. What happens next, however, is even more shocking.
>> What an incredible sight to see Austin Dylan walking away from that three car that is demolished.
>> Austin Dylan walked away from this almost completely unharmed. The word miracle gets thrown around a lot these days, but this is one of those pieces of footage where you keep watching it and have no other explanation. When you consider the history of the three car at Daytona, the whole thing gets all the more eerie. Indeed, the safety innovations that NASCAR adopted following Nhard's death must have certainly saved Austin Dylan on this day. From this point on, Driver 3 has been fully intertwined with the whims of fate. He just withstood the ultimate trial of chaos and in doing so has earned its blessing. Good timing too because NASCAR is getting more chaotic with each passing day.
So let's check in on the second annual NASCAR playoffs. This season we got to witness one driver intentionally cause the big one to save himself from elimination. an eliminated driver intentionally demolishing the points leader and the crowning of a champion who missed a third of the entire schedule. For anyone paying attention, the competitive integrity of the sport was starting to disintegrate before our very eyes. But for the sanctioning body, it was more good old-fashioned drama.
Despite the looming concerns, the folks in charge decided to double, no, triple down on the playoffs. Starting in 2016, NASCAR's two remaining series were also forced to adopt the new system, which now pervaded the sport from top to bottom.
2016 marks the third full-time Cup season for Austin Dylan, and the time has come to pick up the pace. He's trying to outrun an accusation that will follow him throughout his career. Kevin Harvick, RCR's previous flagship driver, has become a dominant contender since leaving the team. Dylan, on the other hand, has shown no signs of improvement, leading some to question whether he deserves his seat in the Cup series.
Nepotism is a vice that affects nearly all walks of life, but it can be especially apparent in the world of sports, where the bar for excellence is so very high. Any athlete who gets stuck with the dreaded label of Nepo baby becomes ripe for ridicule. Paid drivers can be found across all motorsports where wealth really is a substitute for talent. Running a race team is expensive and sometimes you need a delusional rich kid to pick up the slack. In NASCAR, this was the case with the heir to the Zachby's fortune, John West Townley, who would soon be known by his nickname John Rex Weekly. However, such clear-cut cases of nepotism in stock car racing usually aren't so easy to spot. The history of NASCAR is full of racing families, from the Petties to the Nhards to the Elliots. After all, this whole sport is one big family business.
Austin Dylan was hardly the first NASCAR grandson to inherit the keys to the kingdom. The same could be said about the guy overseeing this whole story.
This is Brian France who happens to be the individual responsible for all these recent changes. Brian's grandfather oversaw the sports foundation. His father focused on expansion and Brian's expertise happens to be in acceleration.
To what end exactly? It remains to be seen, but the third generation NASCAR chairman happens to be a big believer in chaos and is prepared to pursue it by any means necessary. Of course, the Brian France era of NASCAR would almost immediately coincide with a precipitous decline in viewership, but who's counting anyway? Most radical new ideas take a while to catch on, so surely the next NASCAR boom is right around the corner. You see, both Austin Dylan and Brian France may have benefited from an extraordinary level of job security. But the difference between them is that Dylan's performance is directly measurable. His successes and failures are fully transparent to anyone watching. Every time he goes out and competes, he's putting his own legacy at risk. The opportunity may have come easy, but he knows damn well not to squander it.
In 2016, Austin Dylan takes a notable step forward, setting career bests in top 10's, top fives, and average finish.
He even qualifies for the 16-man playoffs, finishing the year 14th in the standings. He's getting better, but for many fans, it's not enough. No one really wants to watch the iconic number three right around mid pack. They would much prefer if it was up front competing for the win. For Austin, a victory would carry extra significance. His grandfather, despite a long career, was never able to win at the highest level.
The problem is that after three seasons in cup, Dylan has never even sniffed victory lane. In more than a 100 starts so far, he's only led around 60 laps, most of which were during pit cycles. In terms of pace, he's still well behind the upper echelon of contenders. This stage of development can be crushing for many NASCAR prospects who just can't break through that glass ceiling.
Luckily, there is a tried andrue method for any frustrated cup driver looking to get their confidence back.
They call it bushwacking when Cup Series drivers pay a visit to the softer competition of the lower divisions. This is what was happening in the opening sequence of our story. And now it's Austin's turn to continue the cycle.
Starting in 2015, he returns to NASCAR's second tier series on a part-time basis where he reunites with his winning ways.
But things take an interesting turn in 2016 where he rediscovers how to win.
In a race at Auto Club, he enters the final lap hopelessly behind the two leaders. Yet, shockingly enough, one of them blows a tire and the other runs out of gas, clearing the way for Dylan to steal the victory. Seems like dumb luck, right? Well, not necessarily. In NASCAR, the conventional pathway to victory requires having the fastest car and staying out of trouble. So, how do you win without the fastest car? It turns out you have to use chaos to your advantage. Chaotic events like this are rare, but after enough races, they do happen. And they can be the perfect tool for slower drivers to overcome the odds.
Don't believe me? Well, a very similar situation would play out in the 2016 Cup Series Championship. In the final laps, it looks like Carl Edwards has a clear path to victory until an unexpected caution bunches the field back up. The two leaders then take each other out, allowing Jimmy Johnson to score his seventh cup title. Under ordinary circumstances, Johnson would have had no business winning this race or the championship. But this is a different sport. Now, it's awfully ironic that the very driver the system was designed to thwart ended up being the first one to truly exploit it. In the playoff era, chaos is king. It pays to work with it and not against it.
Starting in 2017, Austin Dylan began putting this theory into practice. He gets off to a lackluster start to the season. After the first 11 races, he's sitting a dismal 22nd in points. But all this time, he's been waiting for an opportunity, and he finally gets one in the longest race of the year, the Ko 600. With the laps winding down, Dylan's crew decide to take a gamble, skipping the final pit stop and trying to stretch his fuel to the end. Fuel mileage races aren't too common in NASCAR, but when they do happen, they can flip the field on its head. All of a sudden, drivers who were non-factors all day confine themselves with a real chance to win.
With just two laps to go, Dylan is running second behind Jimmy Johnson when the 48 car sputters and runs out of gas.
Austin Dylan the new leader as Jimmy Johnson is out of gas. Ah, >> that three's got it made. He's down on the bottom coming around turns three and four.
>> He's got to get there on Fumes. Austin Dylan wins at Charlotte for Richard Childress Racing. Wow.
>> And just like that, the famous number three is back in Victory Lane for the first time since Dale Nhard in October of 2000. As a bonus, the win automatically advances Dylan to the 2017 playoffs, which he parlays into a career best 11th place finish in the standings.
The result completely overshadows what was otherwise a regression in performance for the three team, which only scored four top 10 finishes all season. I guess winning really does fix everything. As for the playoffs, 2017 did produce its share of chaotic moments, but ultimately led to the most orderly result in the history of the format. Martin Trux Jr. put up one of the most statistically dominant seasons in recent memory. In fact, it's the only season that would have won the title across every points format that NASCAR has run throughout its history. 2017, Martin Trux was the most deserving champion that this system could ever produce. But this notion raises a rather disturbing implication. Thus far, NASCAR has been fortunate to avoid any truly catastrophic results that the playoffs are capable of producing. Guys like Johnson, Bush, and Harvick, while not necessarily the best in their respective championship seasons, were at least plausibly in the title hunt. The playoffs seem to work best when the top contenders are evenly matched. But some seasons, one driver is very clearly the class of the field. The design of the playoffs creates a high risk that these dominant seasons are robbed of the championship. What if hypothetically in the winner take all finale, Trux had cut a tire or got a pitro penalty or simply wasn't the fastest car on track? Would this season have been completely wasted?
I suppose we'll just have to cross that bridge when we get there.
The 2018 season begins WITH A BANG.
>> CONTACT ELLIOT. SLAM INTO THE WALL. Are you kidding me?
>> The Daytona 500, known for its long history of chaos, has devolved into a total wreck fest. In this race, the big one strikes not once, not twice, but three times. It's one of those scenarios where anyone can win. And on the final lap, the black number three emerges from out of the pack.
>> Oh, into Alberola. Around he goes. And here it comes with the number three. 20 years ago. 20 years of trying for Nhard.
Austin Dylan wins the 60th running of the Great American Race.
>> For one night only, the Intimidator returns to Daytona. Some of the sports best and brightest have agonized over winning this race. When you have the opportunity to do so, you'd better make the most of it. 3 years earlier, Austin Dylan was sitting upside down in a pile of sheet metal at this very track.
Today, he returns as its conqueror. You can love him or hate him, but if you didn't get a kick out of seeing the three car back on top at Daytona, then you might not be human.
On another note, by securing the Daytona 500 victory, Austin Dylan has automatically qualified for the 2018 playoffs after just a single race. He can pretty much go on vacation for the next 25 weeks, while the rest of the field slugs it out for the remaining spots. As long as he stays above 30th in the standings, he's good to go. You see, the more you learn about the nuances of the playoffs, the less sense it makes.
You're telling me that a driver who runs 30th every week gets to compete for a championship just by locking in to a single fluke victory? I swear the guy who came up with this must have been on drugs.
>> Sir, please step out of the vehicle.
On August 5th, 2018, shortly after the Cup Series race in Watkins Glenn, New York, Brian France was arrested for driving while intoxicated. In his possession was an illegal supply of Oxycodon pills. If you set aside the profound embarrassment of a motorsport CEO blowing a 18 while behind the wheel, all of a sudden, many of NASCAR's more recent decisions are starting to make a lot more sense. The full extent of Brian France's drug and alcohol use while running the sport has never been disclosed and remains the subject of speculation, but in a remarkable turn of events, this fortunate son had actually done enough to lose his spot in the family business. Following the arrest, Brian France was suspended indefinitely from all NASCAR operations. He has never returned.
For as much of a black mark this was on the sport, it provided the sanctioning body with a golden opportunity to hit the reset button to write the wrongs of the prior administration. But NASCAR's age of chaos has only just begun. In fact, it's about to get a whole lot worse. In the 2018 playoffs, Austin Dylan once again gets eliminated in the first round. He ultimately comes home 13th in the standings. But the real focus of this year's championship fight comes down to the driver who will go on to define the playoff era.
>> Flat out just drove straight in the corner and wrecked me.
>> He's just an idiot.
>> I'm going to bust his ass.
>> He would probably say, "Ah, short track racing."
>> And Kenza cleared by Legato. MAYBE NO KENZA TAKES HIM OUT. CAUTION comes out and the crowd roars.
>> Heading into 2018, Joey Logano was potentially the most robbed driver in recent NASCAR history, putting up championship level results in 2015 and 2016, only to walk away empty-handed.
Nobody really cares about this, however, because Joey Logano is simultaneously the most hated driver in recent NASCAR history. Fans do not appreciate his squirrely attitude and reckless driving style. Thus far, his quest for a championship has always ended in failure. But in 2018, Lagano turns the tables on the field. Starting at Martinsville, he bulldozes Martin Trux for the win, securing a spot in the finale. In the final four, he joins Trux, the defending champion, and the two most dominant drivers of the year, who have combined to win nearly half the races on the schedule. Lagano beats them all and presents NASCAR with a bit of a PR disaster. The playoffs had just awarded an undeserved championship to the most hated driver in the sport. If there was ever a time to scrap the system, this was it. It failed to reward either of the two winningest drivers of the year. It failed to drum up any excitement for the championship. It even failed to tell a good story because the guy everyone wanted to see crash and burn walked away victorious. The guy who created this whole charade was just kicked out of the sport in disgrace. Now is the moment to pull the plug and end this madness.
In 2019, NASCAR appoints its new CEO, Jim France.
Like a monarchy, the reigns have been transferred up the family tree to Brian France's uncle, who is more than happy to maintain the status quo. The playoffs aren't going anywhere. Fortunately, the 2019 playoffs are far less egregious as Kyle Bush captures his second championship after another dominant performance. The relative lack of chaos this season could be explained by the absence of Austin Dylan, who suffers a down year, failing to score even a single top five. The following year, however, Chaos returns to NASCAR in a big way.
It may be tempting to ridicule NASCAR for its dysfunction, but this problem is hardly unique to stock car racing.
Plenty of other things are prone to occasional bouts of dysfunction like say the entirety of civilization. A 20 car pileup at Tallaladega may seem amusing, but it's a lot less funny when the very same effect happens to the world economy or the health care system. In NASCAR, we call this the big one, but elsewhere it goes by a different name. In 2007, risk analyst Nasim Nicholas Taleb would label these phenomena as black swan events.
The term seeks to explore our relationship with chaos and how it alters the course of human society. The main idea is that cataclysmic events are far more common than we think and can pretty much materialize out of nowhere.
Just one year after the black swan was published, the global economy would experience its worst meltdown in nearly a century. The recession that followed has been credited for much of NASCAR's decline as it struck at the heart of the sport's predominantly bluecollar audience. About a decade later, NASCAR would face a far more direct threat to its business. When the co pandemic broke out in early March, the 2020 season appeared to be doomed. Over the years, the current NASCAR administration has made a lot of incompetent choices, but they would end up navigating this unprecedented situation surprisingly well. For a few months, virtual NASCAR briefly becomes the most popular esport in the world. And after a lot of maneuvering behind the scenes, teams were back on track just 60 days after the season was put on pause. In fact, NASCAR was momentarily the only active sporting league that people could watch.
Any curious onlookers who stuck around afterwards would witness stock car racing at its most bizarre. Somehow the full 36 race schedule would be completed on time. It involved empty grand stands, double headers, and midweek racing. A set of scenarios that will likely never happen again. During this time, the sport suffers its worst controversy of the 21st century, triggered by nothing more than a simple misunderstanding.
It's a chaotic time in NASCAR and in the middle of it all, Austin Dylan finds himself with another opportunity. In race number 18 at Texas Motor Speedway, the three cars spends most of the day running outside the top 10. However, with a handful of laps to go, the team decides to shake up their strategy. By changing only two tires on a pit stop, Dylan rockets to the top of the order along with RCR teammate Tyler Reic. Now, ordinarily a two-t tire stop is supposed to sacrifice long-term speed for a short-term positional gain, but today conditions are a bit unusual. In this race, NASCAR is running its dreaded 550 horsepower package. Yet another one of Brian France's pet projects designed to add more chaos to the sport.
Historically, unrestricted NASCAR engines have made between 700 and 900 horsepower. But starting around 2018, NASCAR began experimenting with the idea of lowering horsepower at intermediate tracks. The plan was to replicate what had succeeded at the Super Speedways by trying to introduce quasi pack racing to the smaller circuits. The result, however, was some of the most putrid racing that any motorsport fan has ever had the displeasure of watching. Cars were essentially running at full throttle all the way around the track.
Combined with the effects of dirty air, and it was almost impossible for drivers to overtake each other. Passing ended up being so difficult that tire fall off was rendered insignificant, which is exactly what Austin Dylan exploited to score his third career win. The children's cars passed everyone in the pits and the rest of the field just couldn't get around them.
And with that, Dylan has locked in to yet another edition of the playoffs.
Good thing, too, because he ends up missing a race after getting co.
Following this setback, however, Dylan would actually turn in the best playoff performance of his career, scoring two top fives in the opening round. He went on to tie his career best points finish of 11th. But through all the chaos of the season, one driver has clearly emerged as the class of the field. In 2020, Kevin Harvick will post an average finish of 7.3 while winning a quarter of the races on the schedule. It is the most championship worthy season of the playoff era. To top it all off, the championship finale has been moved to Phoenix Raceway, Harvick's best track.
Surely with all this going for him, he must have won the championship, right?
Allow me to introduce you to the saddest round in the history of the NASCAR playoffs. This is bearing in mind that in the past year, a playoff driver actually managed to finish dead last in each of the first three races. I assure you that what Kevin Harvick is about to experience is far, far worse. With four races left in the season, Harvick sits 45 points above the cut line heading into the round of eight. He has this cushion because of the recent addition of playoff points that you can earn throughout the year. Designed to offer drivers some modicum of a reward for performing well during the first 26 races. Harvick has dominated the season, so naturally he's earned a lot more than everyone else. In race 33 at Kansas, Harvick looks like he's cruising to yet another win, which would punch his ticket to Phoenix early. However, this is another race with the 550 package.
After a late caution, Parvik loses the lead out of the pits and never gets it back. For 42 agonizing laps, he is stuck behind the bumper of Joey Logano, who air blocks his way to the victory. As a result, Logano locks into the final four and jumps Harvick, who now sits 41 points above the cut line. The next race is at Texas. Harvick once again finds himself leading, but makes one little mistake.
HARVICK'S INTO THE WALL. HARVICK TAGS the outside wall >> with a damaged race car. The best he can muster is a 16th place finish. Despite the setback, he somehow manages to expand his points gap, sitting on a comfortable margin of plus 42 heading into the cutoff race at Martinsville.
The following week, however, the car is off the pace. Throughout the day, he loses even more ground on the competition, but still sits in the fourth and final transfer spot. That is until Chase Elliot starts bearing down on the victory. A win for the nine car would once again jump Harvick in the standings, leaving him as the first driver out. On the final lap, Harvick needs to gain one position to save his season. And with that, the most dominant driver of the year has been reduced to this.
>> HE NEEDS THE POSITION.
>> OH, HARVICK SPINS THE 18.
>> And Harvick is going to be out of the playoffs.
>> The NASCAR playoffs are supposed to reward winning. That was the sales pitch. And yet, one of the winningest seasons in recent memory didn't just lose the championship, it didn't even get to compete for the championship.
Possibly the most important part of sports is celebrating excellence. This was the most excellent season of Kevin Harvick's career. It deserved to be remembered. And yet, NASCAR devised a system that made it irrelevant. They took what should have been a historic achievement and turned it into something pathetic. This is the point where the playoffs turned from a failed experiment into something much darker. It wasn't just robbing drivers of titles. It was warping our very understanding of greatness. It was preventing legacies from ever being built. Much of this would be overlooked after Chase Elliot, a fan favorite, walked away with the 2020 championship. It was a feel-good story to end what was a debilitating year for so many people. But it's hard to look back at this now and honestly tell yourself that the right guy won.
2021 would produce what remains as the last truly dominant season in the NASCAR Cup Series. Kyle Larson would rack up 10 victories on the year, which thankfully included the final race in Phoenix to collect his first championship. Another orderly result and another season where Austin Dylan is suspiciously absent from the playoffs. Funnily enough, he actually puts up the best average finish of his career in 2021. But the system really doesn't care about consistency.
With each passing year, it's becoming more and more obvious to the drivers that it's win or bust.
>> If you ain't first, you're last.
2022 will only add to this philosophy by adding yet another layer of chaos. It's the debut of the seventh gen race car designed to usher in a new age of parody. I suppose NASCAR got tired of all those 8 n and 10 win seasons. Gone are the days of teams engineering unstoppable supercars. The nextG prototype is essentially a spec car made from single source parts that cannot be modified. meaning that every team in the Cup Series is now on a level playing field. The results speak for themselves.
2022 produces 19 unique winners, nearly 60% of the full-time field. And when winning is up for grabs, you'd better believe Austin Dylan is showing up to the party. By the final regular season race, however, 14 of the 16 playoff spots had been locked up with Dylan still on the outside looking in.
Fortunately for him, this race is at Daytona, where, as we've established, pretty much anyone can win. So far, I've talked about a variety of ways that a race at Daytona can devolve into chaos.
And this one shall be no different.
Today's unraveling will come from one of the oldest forms of chaos in all of nature.
Can a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil end up causing showers in Daytona? The weather has always been notoriously difficult to predict. Even with our modern technology, we cannot reliably forecast it more than a few days in advance. This is especially troublesome for NASCAR, which runs all their events outdoors fully exposed to the elements. So, what exactly is the problem with stock cars running on a wet surface? Well, >> oh, car sideways. All the cars are loose down in the corner.
This was the start of the 2001 All-Star race. Just as the green flag flew, rain began to douse the track. Many drivers couldn't make it through a single corner. It was a pretty embarrassing mishap for NASCAR Race Control, who were supposed to stop the race ahead of time to prevent this exact situation from happening. Needless to say, they certainly learned their lesson, ensuring that a fiasco like this would never happen again until 21 years later. This time the field was entering the corner at full speed. The results went about as well as you'd expect.
>> Way to the wall to go. The 11 now also caught up in it.
>> Oh my gosh.
>> Yeah, guys, there were a lot of drivers saying, "Hey, it's raining. Why are we racing right now?"
>> Almost the entire pack gets wadded up in the outside wall. Almost the entire pack because look who shoots through to the other side.
>> THE THREE OF AUSTIN DYLAN SQUEEZES THROUGH. He is in front and look it VIRTUALLY THE ONLY CAR to clear it.
>> Austin Dylan is then able to hold off the rest of the stragglers and claim his fourth Cup Series victory.
>> Thank you, Jesus, baby.
>> Okay, I'll admit it. This has got to be the most undeserving win he's had so far. As if Moses parting the Red Sea wasn't fortunate enough, Austin Dylan only had to get around one guy down the stretch and he just booted them out of the way, not even attempting a clean pass. By now, the novelty of this whole routine has worn off, and fans are starting to get annoyed by the hijinks.
To add to the frustration, the win knocks Martin Trux out of the playoffs.
The driver who had scored the fourth most points all season would not get to compete for the championship. Dylan hadn't just swindled a race win, he swindled a playoff spot from a far more deserving contender. To be fair, he would go on to another 11th place points finish. So, it's not like he was a waste of space out there, but something felt wrong about one fluke win wiping out a whole season of consistent finishes. I guess modern NASCAR really is a doggy dog world.
2022 was also notable for Austin Dylan in another way because this is the year he gets to star in his very own reality TV show. Despite airing on a major cable network just a few years ago, most of the world seems to have forgotten that this thing ever existed. It is one of the few modern shows I've ever encountered that does not have a Wikipedia page. Its reviews are abysmal and the whole thing was cancelled after just 10 episodes. There is a remote possibility that I am the only person who has laid eyes on this programming over a span of years. So, does Austin Dylan's life in the Fast Lane deserve to be left behind in the past? Well, if you're looking for insight into his NASCAR career, then this isn't for you.
It's more of a lifestyle show designed for what I call the bored housewife demographic. The series mostly follows Austin, his best friend, and their two wives with a little bit of racing sprinkled in. In spite of his chaotic reputation on the track, his domestic life is quite uneventful, and I found myself mostly being bored watching it, which is a shame because I believe there is so much more to Austin Dylan than what the show provides. I feel like the producers missed what actually makes him interesting, choosing instead to fill the airtime with a bunch of frivolous gimmicks. Like most reality shows, it has to rely on a bunch of manufactured drama, which funnily enough makes it just like modern NASCAR. When everyone's super, no one will be. With the combination of the new playoff system and a new car, NASCAR successfully managed to litigate dominance out of the sport. In 2022, no driver would score an average finish better than 12th. Parody had been achieved, but was it something that NASCAR even needed? Pretty much every other sport has their own debate over competitive balance. And while no one wants to feel like their favorite team or player is in a hopeless situation, it's hard to deny that juggernauts make sports compelling. You don't get to tell David's story without Goliath. And often times, dynasties are required to elevate the prestige of what everyone else is fighting for. When each contender is so evenly matched, it makes the champion feel kind of arbitrary. But hey, this new age of parody must surely help elevate new and exciting stars.
Yet, despite half the field ending up in victory lane throughout the year, the championship still ended up going to a familiar face.
>> Hey, Joey, you can save money if you fill up a shell if you use advanced auto parts speed perks. Dude, I'm way ahead of you.
>> LEGANO IS A TWOTIME NASCAR CUP SERIES CHAMPION.
>> YEAH, I sanded the pump.
The 2023 season was more of the same with no driver really separating themselves from the pack. At least this year produced a unique champion in Ryan Blay. Although his average finish of 14.1 was now the worst of any champion in Cup Series history, 2023 would also be the worst season by far for Austin Dylan. It's just one of those years where absolutely nothing goes right. He finishes with zero wins and 10 DNFs. To add insult to injury, a 60point penalty drops him down to 29th in the standings.
Maybe this is a sign that Austin's luck has run out. Or in other words, his best years are behind him. He's getting older now and rumors of retirement begin looming on the horizon. And that brings us to 2024. If you like chaos, then this is the season for you. I describe it as if an entire calendar year of NASCAR was directed by the Joker. There are things that happen in this season that you'd literally have to see to believe. It's a roller coaster of sensational highs and devastating lows, all leading to something so outrageous that the sport as we knew it would never be the same.
But before we get there, somebody should probably wake up Austin Dylan and remind him that the season has started. It looks like the nightmare from last year has only gotten worse. By the middle of July, the three team is sitting a disgraceful 32nd in the standings. But in the following race at Richmond, an extraordinary development starts to take shape. For the first time in his entire Cup Series career thus far, Austin Dylan has racewinning speed. As the laps tick down, he slowly but surely works his way up the order. With just 28 to go, he makes the pass for the lead and starts to pull away. This is an unprecedented situation. Austin Dylan is about to win a race straight up without any gimmicks or shenanigans. It's actually happening.
He's in the clear. All he has to do is get to the line before >> wa and the caution's going to come out right there with under two laps remaining.
>> Oh my god. You didn't seriously believe it would be that simple, did you? Not with this driver. Not in this sport. You see, in the modern chaos era of NASCAR, most of our frustration has been justifiably directed at the championship format. But something that I think gets severely overlooked is the overtime rule. In almost every other motorport, if a caution comes out near the end of the race, it's just over. The car is paced to the advertised distance and the race ends. This is how NASCAR used to work in a far more simple and civilized time. It was the rule when Dale Nhard won the Daytona 500. You know, the most iconic moment in the history of the sport. But as NASCAR fans, we took a look at this and decided that it wasn't chaotic enough. Why should a race have to end under caution? Why not just rack him back up and keep trying until by God, we get the green flag finish we deserve? And so starting in the Brian France era, NASCAR implemented the green white checker policy, which is now known as overtime, a name that just like the playoffs, doesn't even make sense in a motorsport. Both of these things are just two P's from the same rotten pod.
And yet, one gets way more backlash than the other. This is why I'm making the argument that if you're disgusted by the NASCAR playoffs, you should also direct part of that scoring towards NASCAR overtime because they essentially accomplish the same thing, wiping out the lead of a deserving winner and setting up a crapshoot run to the finish. I'll admit that on occasion, this policy has given us some fun moments here and there, but I'll go out on a limb and say that a majority of overtime finishes contribute to a worse outcome than simply ending the race under caution. If you want an example, look no further than what happened just one race before this current one. The 2024 Brickyard 400 was setting up for a memorable finish with veteran Brad Kesallowski stretching his fuel and holding off two hard charging cars behind him. But with just 6 mi left, there's a crash. So that means that we run past the scheduled distance and restart the race. Brad runs out of fuel, so he's forced to pit, setting up this confusing and unnecessary restart lane controversy. But before we can even address that, the field can't even make it through one corner without causing a gigantic crash. A common side effect of the double file restart policy that was also enacted under Brian France. There's so much debris on the track that it takes half an hour to clean up. So long, in fact, that the race exceeds its televised time slot, and the broadcast has to be booted over to cable, meaning that most viewers at home never even got to see the finish. Oh, and what was the finish, you may ask? Well, Kyle Larson just drove away completely unopposed and the race ended under caution anyway after another guy wrecked and stalled out on the track. The race ended under caution anyway. You know, the exact scenario that overtime is supposed to prevent in the first place. Now, tell me, was all of this seriously a better outcome than if they just let Brad Kesalowski coast to the line at the scheduled distance? Was it really worth it to crash all these cars and waste all this time? Seriously, can someone explain to me what the point of any of this is? And we're just going to do the same thing the very next week.
>> Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?
>> It would have been such a nice story for Dylan to finally earn a victory after a year and a half of struggle. But now we don't get to see that. It was ruined so we can watch Hamlin or Logano win for the millionth time. So, you know what?
[ __ ] him.
>> There's the contact. He does get to him.
The 11 on the inside. He gets into the wall. Dylan's going to win. It is alive.
>> Keep coming down. Down. Down. Down. No down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down no down here. Come on >> and he just pulls a chicken [ __ ] move.
He's a piece of crap. The kid he sucks.
He's sucked his whole career.
>> Pop pop pop.
This just might be the dumbest thing that's ever happened on a NASCAR track.
When people imagine a bunch of dumb rednecks driving in circles, this is probably what they picture in their heads. Fans were understandably pissed.
They called Austin Dylan gutless. They said he embarrassed the whole sport. But guess what? When you design a championship system that actively invites stupidity, don't be surprised when it actually shows up. What Austin Dylan did at the end of this race wasn't just awesome. I'd argue it was completely justifiable.
Often lost in the spectacle of racing is that each of these cars is not a one-man show. There are dozens of people below the line that make it all possible.
Winning and making the playoffs isn't just some vanity project for the driver.
It unlocks millions of dollars in prize money that helps pay for all these hard workers. For the past 18 months, the three team has been enduring miserable results despite their best efforts.
Austin Dylan sees these people depending on him every day. And on top of that, he's not getting any younger himself.
For all he knows, this may be the last shot at glory he's ever going to get.
But come on now, does all of this really make it justifiable to intentionally crash two opponents for the win?
Everyone wants to win obviously, but you have to at least do so under a basic system of etiquette. And my response to that is, why should he? Because if we're being honest with ourselves, NASCAR's age of etiquette went away a long time ago. The modern sanctioning body has pretty much always maintained a hands-off approach when policing intentional contact. It's a well-known fact at this point that you can purposely wreck someone for the win and not be punished for it. The two victims of tonight have been guilty of this.
Dylan himself has been guilty of this.
So why not push things even further? The best case scenario is that they just let it slide like everything else. But unfortunately, Austin Dylan had crossed an invisible line in the sand. A few days later, NASCAR announces that the three team will not be granted a playoff birth from this stunt. It goes down in the record books as an encumbered victory, which is usually reserved for cars that get caught breaking the rules or failing post-race inspection. But the hilarious thing about all of this is that I don't believe Austin Dylan actually broke any rules here. I think what he did was so outlandish that no one thought to make a rule for it and that NASCAR simply invented one after the fact specifically to punish him. Of course, the sanctioning body keeps their rule book a secret, so we'll never know if this was the case. But with the ruling, Austin Dylan was condemned to maintain a 32nd place points finish. So, does that mean that this grand gesture was all for nothing? Well, in an odd way, I think that when you look at the bigger picture, this whole affair was a win for the sport for a reason that was actually hiding in plain sight. Because for the first time in god knows how long, NASCAR's leadership were forced to backtrack.
Dylan's antics had essentially caused them to expose their own hypocrisy.
Welcome to the playoffs where anyone has a chance because it's win and you're in.
But not like that. All of a sudden, there was a moment that was too chaotic for the sport that loves chaos in the midst of their most chaotic season in history. It sounds like such a small thing, but this incident planted a seed in the minds of both the fans and the folks in charge. At a moment when it feels like change is impossible, you'd be surprised how quickly it can all unravel.
For 10 years now, the playoffs have been sabotaging drivers. The time has finally come to sabotage the playoffs. To make this happen, we're going to need someone to pull off the greatest troll job in NASCAR history. Someone who's not afraid of being hated. Someone who has plenty of experience with pissing off the fan base. We need an anti-hero.
And then a go up there and thank God and praise everything with his baby. It's a bunch of BS. It's not even freaking close.
>> Did I ever tell you about the legend of Even your Lagano? If you've been paying close attention, you may have noticed that since the very beginning of the playoffs, Joey Lagano has made it to the finals every year that ends in an even number. During this streak, when he's not taking the title for himself, he often plays a major part in deciding the winner. You may also notice that 2024 is another evenumbered year, but halfway through the season, it looks like the streak is in jeopardy because Logano has been running way off the pace. Don't worry, though, because this is all according to plan. Think about it this way. If you could invent a scenario that would most totally destroy the credibility of these NASCAR playoffs, how would you do it? Well, we've already seen what it's like when the system robs an elite driver of a deserved championship. This is pretty bad, but it's still not the worst case scenario.
No, that would be if the system rewards a mediocre driver with an undeserved championship. For instance, did you know that in the NASCAR playoffs, it's possible to win the title even after finishing dead last in 31 of the 36 events? This hypothetical was only made possible in the last few years after they removed the 30th place minimum entry requirement. And it's simply astounding. Let's say for the first 25 races of the year, you show up each week and park your car after just one lap, scoring 25 last place finishes. In race 26, you win, locking yourself into the playoffs despite sitting dead last in the standings. Now, just repeat these same steps in each of the three rounds of the playoffs, finishing dead last twice and winning once. And congratulations, you have now advanced to the final four. And for the cherry on top in the championship race, all you have to do is finish ahead of the other three contenders. and the sport of NASCAR under this current rule set would be forced to recognize you as the champion. In 2024, Joel Lagano is about to do the closest thing possible to this.
In what was otherwise a middling regular season, he wins precisely once. He does this in the dumbest way possible. After an unprecedented five overtime clown show sends the race so far past its scheduled distance that the leaders start running out of fuel. This allows Logano to swoop in and steal the victory after being out of contention all day.
Step one complete. Now it's on to round one of the playoffs. Here he wastes no time and edges out another victory at Atlanta, which has recently been reconfigured into NASCAR's third Super Speedway to add more chaos, of course.
On to round two where Logano appears to hit a bit of a snag. He's banking on winning a Tallaladega which he gets close to doing before getting taken out by the big one. He finishes way back in 33rd, falling so far in the standings that the next week he gets eliminated from the playoffs.
>> Unfortunately, the two-time series champion does not have an opportunity to be a three-time champ. Their playoffs run ends right now.
This, of course, is all according to plan because a few hours later, Alex Bowman, the face of disappointment, gets disqualified in post-race inspection.
The ruling drops him out of the next round and puts Lagano back in. The very next week, he stretches his fuel to barely squeak out a victory at Las Vegas, moving him all the way up to the championship race. Now, this is the part of the mission where it's imperative that our secret agent is a hated driver.
Because despite the sheer amount of stupidity it's taken to get to this step, there is still a risk of fans starting to rally around the situation as some kind of Cinderella run.
Fortunately, Lagano is not some pluckucky underdog from the back of the pack. He spent plenty of time hogging the spotlight and is someone the fans will surely be disgusted to see win. In fact, the very idea of this seems to whip the rest of the sport into a frenzy. With only three spots in the championship remaining, the rest of the field enters desperation mode. Tyler Reic, who just a week before was sent tumbling upside down, clinches the next spot with a win at Homestead. The following week, Ryan Blay secures the third spot at Martinsville. But behind him, the chase for the championship turns ugly. This game of musical chairs has left only one spot up for grabs and the teams who end up fighting for it happen to be the two most powerful organizations in NASCAR. The loser will be left out of the championship entirely. Because of this, the race devolves into a truly dark moment for the sport. It features obvious signs of collusion and team orders at a manufacturer level. There is enough evidence to disqualify both drivers involved in the dispute, but NASCAR ultimately disregards the whole situation, choosing instead to move Christopher Bell out on a technicality.
The very legitimacy of the sport was melting down right in front of us. But at the end of the day, all the mayhem, manipulation, and bad blood didn't end up mattering. While everyone else was at each other's throats, the yellow 22 car simply drove off into the sunset.
Joey Lagano in the history. He's a threetime Cup Series champion. This today is one of the worst days that I've had in a long time.
>> Is it okay that I feel like I don't want to live anymore?
>> Yes, Bobby. That's normal.
>> This this chicainery. Are you telling me that a man just happens to fall like that? No. He orchestrated it. What a sick joke.
Allan, we are so [ __ ] >> Well, in the words of Yogi Barra, it's deja vu all over again. Joey Logano wins the 2024 championship with an average finish of 17th. Over all 36 races, 11 other drivers scored more points than him. In fact, the three drivers who scored the most points all season didn't even get to compete for the championship. And that's not all. By winning the title two of the last three years, Joey Logano has put together the makings of a playoffs dynasty. After all this time spent trying to inject more chaos into the sport, order still found a way to emerge on the other side. How did they do it? The same way Jimmy Johnson did it all those years ago. When you crown a champion at the same track every year, all you have to do is invest your resources in that one track. Lagano and Penske Motorsports figured out that if you're the fastest at Phoenix, you're pretty much guaranteed a championship as long as you make it there, which with a little bit of luck isn't that hard to do. The playoffs had been solved, which meant that they were now broken beyond repair. No one knew what this meant for the future of the sport. But if one thing's for sure, this is the moment that Joey Logano became Heisenberg.
>> YOU CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT.
YEAH, I saved at the pump.
>> All the way back in the 2016 finale, when Carl Edwards dreams of a championship evaporated after it looked like victory was assured, he stepped out of his car, left the track, and never raced again. The chaos had simply become too much for him. For years, I never understood how a driver in their prime could walk away from all that fame and fortune. But now, I get it because in the 2024 season, the chaos became too much for me. And I'm someone who happens to like chaos. It makes for a good story. But this season of NASCAR racing really made me question whether I still should. In fact, I started wondering how any human being is supposed to feel about chaos. Conventional wisdom seems to offer us mixed messages. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's evil. The Dungeons and Dragons alignment chart places chaos on its own axis entirely.
Plenty of religious texts consider disordered to be an enemy of mankind, while others believe that it's an essential part of life itself. In modern fiction, chaos is typically associated with villains, but it may also be a heroic attribute if law and order become too oppressive. When we examine our own lives, chaos is usually bad news for organized societies, often leading to the collapse of the stock market and in extreme cases, the population. But even with that in mind, there is something undeniably tempting about spontaneous events.
>> But what are you waiting for? I don't know, something amazing. I guess >> perhaps we can learn to appreciate them because there may come a day when chaos becomes a thing of the past. One of the leading theories in thermodynamics spells out the eventual heat death of the universe where all matter and energy will break down into an endless soup of nothingness. In this final state of maximum entropy, chaos as we know it would cease to exist. The universe would remain at rest unchanging for eternity.
This is all to suggest that chaos may ultimately become the most destructive force we know. It can even destroy itself.
Midway through the 2025 season, NASCAR announced that the playoff format had reached its merciful end. After 12 years of chaos and 12 years of frustration, the sport is finally embracing order.
Once again, the new system will scrap the winner take all finale and place more emphasis on consistent finishes.
Due to contractual obligations, the changes were set to go into effect starting in the 2026 season. This meant that 2025 was now the last harrah for NASCAR's Age of Insanity. Hopefully, that means that the worst is behind us.
All that was left to do is run out the clock and pray that nothing else stupid happens. So, you know what? To commemorate the end of an era, let's take a break from all the existential dread and have some fun.
>> This is fun. We're having fun.
>> Did you know that Austin Dylan has a brother?
Despite following in Austin's footsteps, Ty Dylan could never really step out of his older brother's shadow. He won less, finished worse, and struggled to accomplish much of anything. After seven seasons in cup, he could only muster up a handful of top 10s, spending most of his career as a journeyman for back marker teams. In 2024, he was demoted to the truck series and couldn't even put up good results there. But just when it looked like he was on his way out of the sport, opportunity came calling. A cup seat had opened up for the 2025 season, giving Tai one more chance to compete at the highest level. Of course, he immediately went back to being an afterthought. That is until the beginning of NASCAR's inaugural inseason tournament. I know, I know it sounds like yet another incipid gimmick, but with no real championship implications, it really is just a fun sideshow to keep fans entertained during the dog days of summer. Anyway, the tournament bracket features 32 drivers, and Ty Dylan just barely makes the cut as the 32nd seed.
In the first round, he gets matched up against the points leader, Denny Hamlin.
Clearly, he has no shot of beating him, right? Well, not so fast. The first round takes place at Atlanta, which you'll recall is now a super speedway, which tend to trigger the big one, which ends up happening and collecting Denny Hamlin. Tai, on the other hand, scores his lone top 10 of the season and advances to the second round. The following week, his opponent once again gets caught up in an early pileup, allowing Tai to cruise to the quarterfinals. The week after that, he just barely edges out his next opponent to reach the final four. The week after that, the same exact thing happens. And all of a sudden, the lowest ranked driver in the entire tournament has advanced to the finals. He comes so close to winning the whole thing, too, only needing to finish above 21st. But at the end of the road, the glass slipper finally broke for Ty Dylan.
Coincidentally, the winner happens to be another racing grandson named Tai, leaving our hero to wonder what could have been. He didn't get a fairy tale ending, but for a brief window of time, Tai Dylan was the talk of the NASCAR world, seizing every opportunity in a way that only a children could. I tried to tell you that chaos runs in this family. Speaking of which, how did the other Dylan brother perform in 2025?
Well, after moving past the whole collusion deal from last season, Austin Dylan pretty much went back to business as usual. Just a few weeks until the playoffs, he's found himself right at home, sitting 28th in the standings.
That's when he pays another visit to Richmond Raceway. A year removed from the one that sort of got away. By now, Austin Dylan has won races in just about every unexpected way imaginable. It's gotten to the point where the most surprising thing he could do is score a good old-fashioned, straightforward, ordinary victory. And by now, you've probably figured out that Austin Dylan is full of surprises.
Last year, it was controversy right here where there was contact with Joey Leano, contact with Denny Hamlin. There's no contact this year. It's all Austin Dylan. HE'S GOING TO THE PLAYOFFS.
OH, BABY. Who is your daddy? Let's go.
>> It wouldn't be the swan song of the playoffs without Austin Dylan randomly locking up a spot with a win that no one on earth could have predicted. And this time he gets to keep it. So now all that's left to do is run through the playoffs one last time. Maybe after all the turmoil this format has caused, it can at least bow out of the sport gracefully. And well, let's just say that everyone was reminded of why they were glad to see it go.
Championship weekend of 2025 would prove to be the most tumultuous in NASCAR history. The absurdity of these playoffs would fully metastasize in all three series across three days of pure psychosis. Thus far, I've neglected to mention how the playoffs have warped NASCAR's lower divisions. We've missed out on such gems as a truck series driver becoming champion with zero wins and an Xfinity series driver becoming champion after winning for the very first time. But rest assured, both of these series have saved the best for last. So, let's start with the truck series. Coryheim has just put up the most dominant season in its 30-year history. He enters the finale having won 11 of the 24 races. He has led more than 40% of the laps on the entire schedule.
His three opponents in the final four have combined for one victory between them. This is the NASCAR equivalent of a hydrogen bomb versus three coughing babies. Under any reasonable format, time would have locked up the championship weeks ago, but as we know, the NASCAR playoffs may put his entire season in jeopardy. So, everyone is left to hold their breath and pray that the guy we all know deserves the championship actually gets to win it. He comes so close to getting screwed over by late race shenanigans. But after making a sevenwide pass on the final restart, Coryheim got to walk away with the championship that he already earned long ago.
The following night, Connor Zillich wasn't so lucky. He entered the Expinity Series finale with 10 victories, more than double any other driver in the field. At one point during the season, he put together a stretch of 18 consecutive top five finishes. He has accomplished all of this before his 20th birthday. Zillich may very well be the most talented NASCAR prospect we have ever seen, but the playoffs do not care about who you are and what you've done.
With just 25 laps to go, he falls out of the lead and never gets it back. He loses the championship to the Richard Children's Racing car of Jesse Love, who only won a single other race all season.
The crew chief for this car is Danny Stockman, who 12 years earlier was a top the pit box for Austin Dylan's zero win championship in this same series. After the defeat, Connor Zillich stepped out of his car, sat down, and sobbed. Every sport is always looking to create new stars. Zillich deserved to be celebrated as one of NASCAR's brightest, and the playoffs just snuffed him out. By Sunday's Cup Series finale, everyone is just ready to move on. Forget all the exhausting arguments about fairness and legitimacy. All we want out of the playoffs at this point is a feel-good moment. Can they at least deliver us that much? This season in Cup, there's no dominant title favorite, but in this race, there is a sentimental favorite.
Denny Hamlin is NASCAR's most decorated driver who has never won the championship. His father has fallen terminally ill and will not live to see him try again next year. The race that follows is plagued by chaos. The tire compound is too soft, causing numerous blowouts throughout the day. No one is safe, not even the championship contenders. But through all of this, Hamlin stays the course. He dominates the race, leading 208 of the 319 laps.
With four laps to go, he is riding off into the sunset. The wheel for Denny Hamlin is still and perfect. And then, oh boy, William Byron has a tire issue and the caution is out.
Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?
While sitting in the cockpit after watching it all go to [ __ ] the 44year-old Hamlin simply gazed forward with tears in his eyes. It doesn't matter how old you are, the feeling never gets any less painful.
Do you ever wonder if back in 2006, Brian France watched the end of the movie Cars while possibly drunk or high and decided to make that the official championship format of the biggest motorsport in America? Because I really have no other explanation for why anyone thought this was a good idea. How could we not see any of this coming in a sport where this is possible? We're going to decide our champions within one single race. What were we thinking? How could any of us be this stupid? The NASCAR playoffs have left behind a legacy of fire and fury, not unlike what General Sherman left behind after his march to the sea. Eight out of 12 times it failed to reward the driver who scored the most points. Nine out of 12 times it failed to reward the driver who won the most races. 10 out of 12 times it failed to reward the driver with the best average finish. If we weren't crowning champions based on any of these metrics, then what exactly have we been doing this whole time? NASCAR just spent more than a decade rigging the sport so that the best driver usually wasn't the champion.
This is not just dysfunction, it's malpractice. And now I come to find out that this mental sickness is somehow infesting other motorsports. Why? So we can keep manufacturing more of these bogus game seven moments. For my entire life, I've never understood this misguided obsession with making auto racing more like other sports. When I first started watching NASCAR at the age of 8, I didn't choose to become a fan because it reminded me of football or baseball or basketball. I watched NASCAR because it was unique. There was nothing else like it. The Book of Genesis describes the origin of mankind's descent into chaos. When Adam and Eve picked the forbidden apple and were expelled from the Garden of Eden, they already had everything they needed, but they still wanted more. They wanted to be something else. NASCAR is located squarely in the middle of the Bible belt. You'd think that they of all people would have heeded the warning, but no, they still made the mistake of picking the apple.
>> The format is one thing, right? But playoffs, I think we're we're not going to go away from playoffs.
>> The folks in charge then spent the next decade figuring out why anything resembling playoffs doesn't belong in motorsports. You didn't need to waste 12 years to understand this. All you had to do was look at the word itself to know that it doesn't fit.
This January, NASCAR announced the new championship format, which looks to be a rehash of the Chase for the Cup. For many fans, it wasn't enough. The excessive chaos of the past decade has contributed to a ground swell of support for the traditional order of the original full season points format. In terms of returning to order, the new system is at least a step in the right direction. But even now, after everything that's happened, NASCAR's executives have expressed a hesitancy to abandon chaos. They are still terrified of allowing the sport to be judged on its own merits. The traditional way of doing points would be tough to do in this era. Uh because we are looking towards a younger group of people.
Somebody's winning the point series by 487 points. Like, I mean, that ain't exciting to the young guy. So, we got to make it exciting. and our attention spans. My social media guy says, "Remember Chris, 30 seconds long, not 4 hours. 30 seconds to get."
>> I mean, hell, at this point, why not just put Subway Surfers or Family Guy clips on the broadcast if we're so concerned about chasing fickle engagement? I happen to know for a fact that you don't need a bunch of vapid gimmicks to make people care about this sport. I know this because I've single-handedly made millions of people tune in to stories about NASCAR, many of whom had never seen a single race before. And for as tempting as it may be to personally take credit for this, I'll confess that I am simply the messenger relaying to the rest of the world what was already set in stone long ago. There is no magic spell I'm putting on people to force them to care. This sport, for all of its problems, really is that interesting. When you take it seriously, the grit, drama, and intensity are unmatched by anything else. For too long, the people running the show have lost sight of this, and now a new generation of Americans are discovering their love of racing through another sport. Formula 1 is now routinely beating NASCAR in the young demographics that our league is so desperate to impress. They didn't achieve this by stuffing their series full of contrived theatrics. They made larger than-l life stars by simply letting the best drivers go out and dominate. Most seasons end in blowouts. Most races end in blowouts.
But for some reason, short attention spans no longer seem to apply. People tune in. This past season saw one of the greatest championship battles in history. They didn't need point resets or multiple rounds or eliminations. It was just good old-fashioned racing. The solution is clear, and sooner or later, NASCAR may be forced to change their ways. I remember 20 of us drivers went about, I don't know, 5 years ago, maybe 6 years ago, and sat with NASCAR and and said, "These are the things that we think will help make the sport better."
And a person in NASCAR that I won't name sat there and looked me square in the eye and said that everything that we were talking about and what I was saying was 180° backwards. And that's kind of when I was like, we're in we're in bad shape. We're in trouble.
>> Way back in the summer of 1969, a rift formed between NASCAR and its race teams that was never really mended. More than half a century later, these tensions finally reached a boiling point.
In 2024, team owners Bob Jenkins, Denny Hamlin, and some guy named Michael Jordan filed an antirust lawsuit against the sanctioning body. The subsequent trial, which took place in December 2025, made Jim France and his lackey look completely inept. As the case against NASCAR mounted higher and higher, their position soon became untenable and they caved. Denny Hamlin, who just one month earlier was humiliated by the playoff format, ended up getting the last laugh. NASCAR was forced to settle with the teams, giving them pretty much everything they wanted.
For the first time ever, there was a crack in the armor of the France family dictatorship.
In the fallout of the lawsuit, the relationship between the sanctioning body and the teams has been strained to its absolute limit. The trial process ended up leaking private messages from NASCAR's top executives that shocked and appalled the rest of the sport. The most troubling comment came from commissioner Steve Phelps, who called Richard Childress a stupid redneck that owed his entire fortune to what NASCAR provided him. Not long after the trial, Phelps was forced to resign. This whole ordeal burnt a lot of bridges along the way.
But perhaps out of the ashes, a new NASCAR can emerge, one where the folks in charge are more accountable to the teams and the fans.
>> What a day in Daytona. One of the greatest athletes of all time gets to come to Victory Lane and hoist one of the greatest trophies of all time. I don't know what the future holds for stock car racing. I can't say whether people will like the new format or how much longer the Frances are going to be running the show. I am confident, however, that throughout all of this, Austin Dylan has probably been smiling, unbothered, and unafraid. He'll most likely race for a few more seasons and then eventually take over the family business, which in recent years could use a bit of a tuneup. And who knows, maybe the children's racing lineage will continue one day. But for now, Austin Dylan remains as a polarizing figure, loved by some and ridiculed by others.
The debate rages on over whether he truly earned the spot he was given. The way I see it, if he walks away from the sport today, he would do so with six Cup Series victories to his name. That puts him well within the 100 best drivers to ever suit up at NASCAR's highest level.
Did he match the legacy of the Intimidator? Obviously not. But he managed to carry on the number three in his own unique way. Like it or not, it's hard to imagine this crazy modern era of NASCAR without Austin Dylan stealing a win when you least expect it. Maybe it's finally time to give him the respect he deserves. After all, I believe that he has an awful lot to teach us.
The wind that extinguishes a candle's flame can also fuel a blazing inferno.
Several years after predicting the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes, Nim Taleb would publish antifragile, a revolutionary new theory about things that get stronger with chaos. This mysterious property can apply to just about everything from the most complex systems to the simplest life forms. It can even apply to race car drivers. Life as we know it is getting more chaotic.
With each passing day, it's becoming harder and harder to predict the future.
Modern institutions believe that they can dodge chaotic events. They spend billions on fancy models which attempt to foresee the unforeseeable. But in an age of disorder, all this prognosticating is ultimately futile. No one knows what surprises are waiting for us down the road. Just like how no one knows if it's going to rain during the next race at Daytona. Chaos can only ruin people who are foolish enough to believe it won't affect them. To survive chaos, you must learn to expect it. You don't have to predict it. You don't even have to fully understand it. You just need to acknowledge it as an inevitability. Only then will it start working in your favor. So the next time the world around you begins slipping into pandemonium, it would be wise to follow the black swan.
Heat. Heat.
Oh yeah.
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