Corey Heim has more reason to hate the old playoff format than most in the NASCAR garage. It cost him the Truck Series championship in 2024 and forced him to survive a chaotic overtime restart in the finale to secure the title in 2025, despite winning 12 of the season’s 25 races. So, when conversations about the system and its merits come up, Heim, who won the Brickyard 400 in the Cup Series two weeks ago, should be the last person to defend it. At least, that’s what we thought.

The man who once claimed that the playoff system “awarded mediocrity” had some positive things to say about it on the Stacking Pennies podcast.

“I wasn’t that against the win-and-advance thing. I think that was fine. Because you win to get in, then you win to advance, and you win to win the championship.”

In 2024, Heim won five Truck Series races and entered the Championship as the favorite, only to lose the winner-take-all finale to Ty Majeski. Suddenly, everything he had accomplished during the regular season seemed to count for nothing.

But rather than slam the format that buried him, Heim said he was never against it. And that set the stage for the next topic he had an opinion on: fans going back to watch races from two decades ago and comparing the sport to what it once was, calling the good old days better.

“I’m a guy that loves going back and watching those races,” Heim stated. “But I’m not gonna lie, like, the pre-race stuff’s really cool, watching the green flag’s cool, but it’s not like I’m sitting there being like, wow, this racing’s so much better than what it is today. Like, it’s really not.”

Co-host Corey LaJoie had his own issue to settle. He wants fans to tune into Cup Series races on Sundays and enjoy what’s on, instead of watching clips on YouTube or social media to comment on an era they really have no idea about.

Neither of them is saying the old races were bad. What they are saying is that the people building entire arguments around highlight clips are probably not watching what is happening right now.

The win-and-advance format had a clean concept on paper. In practice, the race tracks became less about tyres on gravel and more about winner politics.

At Martinsville in 2024, Chevrolet drivers formed a deliberate blockade to protect William Byron’s position while a Toyota driver slowed down several seconds per lap just to hand Christopher Bell the exact spot he needed. NASCAR sanctioned fines and suspensions, but the damage was done.

Then the championship finished what remained of this action. Joey Logano entered the 2024 playoffs 15th out of 16 drivers. He was eliminated in the Round of 12, then put back in after Alex Bowman’s car failed a post-race inspection. Two rounds later, he lifted the trophy.

Kyle Larson that year had six wins and 15 top-five finishes. Logano had four wins and a 17.1 average finish, the worst ever recorded by a NASCAR champion. With a format like that, when you’re rooting for a certain driver with the data in hand, someone else winning on a whim can be frustrating.

And so NASCAR scrapped the system ahead of 2026. The new 10-race Chase format runs on straight cumulative points with no mid-round cutoffs. Denny Hamlin had been calling for the change on his podcast for years. Christopher Bell, who was knocked out at Martinsville in 2024, sat on the committee that helped design this Chase part of the race year.

Heim is not pretending the old format had no logic. Win to get in. Win to advance. Win the title. That part made sense. What broke it was everything teams were willing to do in between.