As the 2025 NASCAR season nears its end, former Cup Series driver and current Fox Sports analyst Kevin Harvick has reignited debate over the fairness of the sport’s playoff system. On his Harvick Happy Hour podcast, Harvick expressed frustration that NASCAR’s current championship format can punish season-long dominance, especially in cases like Corey Heim and Connor Zilisch.
On @HarvickHappyPod, Kevin Harvick said it would be embarrassing for the series if Corey Heim and Connor Zilisch didn’t win their series championships. pic.twitter.com/NiohUZKpHL
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) October 28, 2025
Kevin Harvick Points to Heim and Zilisch as Examples of Unfairness
Both drivers have been nearly unstoppable this year, Heim with 10 wins in 22 Truck Series starts and Zilisch matching that total across 28 Xfinity Series races. Yet despite those records, both risk missing out on their respective championships because of the one-race, winner-take-all structure.
Harvick didn’t hold back. He said that if Heim doesn’t win the Truck title, it would be “a nuclear meltdown,” adding that it shouldn’t even be a debate who the champions are in Trucks or Xfinity, given how dominant Heim and Zilisch have been.
He argued that the current system makes it possible for a driver with only one win to beat someone who has dominated all season, something he called “an embarrassment” for the sport. Harvick said he’d be “devastated” if Heim lost after such a historic run, emphasizing that NASCAR’s playoff structure doesn’t properly value the points earned throughout the year.
“If we’re going to have playoffs,” Harvick said, “you better make the points matter as much as possible. These guys shouldn’t lose a full season’s championship to someone with a single win. Something small or random shouldn’t decide a title. That’s not what a champion should be.”
Comparing the system to Other Sports
Harvick went on to compare NASCAR’s system to other major sports, noting that when a lower-seeded team beats a higher-seeded one, there’s usually a series or a larger sample size that determines the better team. NASCAR, on the other hand, decides everything in one race, something he believes makes the outcome far too random.
“That’s why there has to be a bigger sample size,” Harvick continued. “They don’t like one race determining it. I don’t care if it’s the last four or last three, but this one-race format doesn’t reflect what happens over a full season.”
He also pushed back on the argument that the playoff format improves ratings. NASCAR’s so-called “Game 7 moment,” he said, hasn’t delivered the kind of excitement or growth that was promised when the system was introduced. “That one-race championship moment has done absolutely zero to make it more exciting,” Harvick said.
Balancing Drama and Fairness: Harvick Calls for a Rethink of NASCAR’s Playoff Format
While Harvick admitted that the Cup Series playoff field has been fairly balanced this season, he believes the Truck and Xfinity divisions are far more lopsided and that if Heim or Zilisch don’t win their titles, it would be “an embarrassment to the whole season.”
NASCAR’s playoff format, first launched in 2004 and refined multiple times since, was built to add drama and unpredictability to the championship fight. But Kevin Harvick’s comments tap into a long-running tension between entertainment value and sporting integrity.
With Heim and Zilisch dominating from start to finish, a fluke loss in the finale could reignite serious discussions about how NASCAR crowns its champions, and whether the thrill of the playoffs is worth the cost of fairness.
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This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
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