For those who do not know what happened, yesterday was the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway, which was one of the most blatantly corrupt races I've ever seen, but to give a TL;DR of the situation:
Chevrolet told several of the teams that drive its cars to make a blockade in order to guarantee that at least one of its drivers, this time William Byron, would be able to make the Championship 4 race happening this Sunday. This blatant collusion was recorded on several drivers' radios being communicated by their spotters and crew chiefs, which is bringing into question the validity of the current 'playoff' format.
It sucks, and god I wish we went back to the full season format, or at max, the 10 race Chase, because the 'playoffs' don't even boost ratings, which I'd imagine is NASCAR's goal.
NASCAR is fun, but it’s hard to care about playoffs for that type of sport.
This is how I enjoy the on track action for all 3 of the major NASCAR series; I just ignore the playoff implications, fights, and don't even bother keeping up with how the points system works. I just enjoy seeing how the races play out because I think the base racing product itself is still very good.
Besides, it's hard to make a playoff format work when you still have all 40 or so of the participants on track at the same time. Playoffs only work in other stick and ball sports BECAUSE they don't have more than 2 teams play at the same time, better setting up an elimination format.
I agree, it's way more fun to treat each race as it's own thing.