Freddie Kraft spots for Bubba Wallace at 23XI Racing. His job at the team co-owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan is to be his driver’s eyes from the top of the grandstand, calling out traffic, giving position updates, and keeping him out of trouble. What he is supposedly not to do is go on a podcast and tell the world his driver has no shot at the Cup Series championship.
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Kraft, however, did it anyway. And in doing so, he handed Dale Earnhardt Jr. the best argument yet for shrinking the NASCAR postseason field.
The question was whether Wallace, who is currently 14th in the standings, was going to win the championship come the finale at Homestead-Miami. “Nope,” was Kraft’s definitive answer.
Wallace is sitting on 587 points and currently holds a provisional spot in the Chase, with two races to go in the regular season. But Kraft was not taking a shot at him.
It echoes what Hall of Famer Dale Jr. has reiterated many times over the last few months. With 16 drivers making the postseason, nearly half the field gets in. At this point, it barely feels like a playoff. It is more like an extended regular season with a fancier name.
And Kraft himself kept going on the Door Bumper Clear podcast. “Who’s f***ing 16 right now? Cindric, at a 100-point deficit. Is he gonna win the championship? Nope,” the 23XI employee continued, this time talking about the Team Penske driver.
Cindric actually climbed a place thanks to his brilliant third-place finish in Richmond last Saturday. He’s at 574 points, with Shane van Gisbergen 50 points behind, holding the last spot for the Chase. Under the 10-driver model that’s been proposed, neither would even be in the conversation for the Chase.
That is the whole argument right there. NASCAR’s own numbers back it up. The champion comes from the top six seeds 85% of the time. The drivers in positions 11 through 16 are, quite frankly, long shots. Every broadcast hour spent on their bubble drama is time spent on something that seldom produces a champion.
Right now, with two regular season races left at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Daytona International Speedway, seven drivers have already punched their tickets. Hamlin leads the standings at 969 points with four wins. Tyler Reddick has five wins, the most of anyone. Ryan Blaney, Ty Gibbs, Chase Briscoe, Chase Elliott, and Christopher Bell are all in. The remaining nine spots are still up for grabs, and that scramble is exactly what Dale Jr. thinks should carry more weight than it currently does.
Cut to 10 drivers, and the bubble fight involves Larson, Logano, and Buescher. All of them are real contenders.
NASCAR, however, is not likely to change it, and the reason is straightforward. The difference in prize money between finishing 16th and 17th in the regular season is about $2 million. Sponsors want the exposure, and teams need the cash.
Earnhardt Jr. sat on the format committee and made his case, but he lost. Now, he has a 23XI Racing employee publicly writing off his own driver to prove the point, and that is a hard thing to argue against.
Dale Jr.’s Bigger Fight With NASCAR
The Chase format is not the only thing Earnhardt Jr. is pushing back on this season. What happened at Iowa Speedway put the rulebook in his crosshairs, and he was direct about it.
Before the race, Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team found a material defect in his brake pads during pre-race preparations. Under NASCAR’s impound rules, once a car qualifies, it is locked down. Any part swap is treated as an unapproved vehicle adjustment, which means a penalty.
In this case, fixing the brakes would have dropped Hamlin to the rear of the field. Because the issue was found so close to the start, going to the garage would have also put him 15 to 20 laps down under green flag conditions. Hamlin took the green flag with bad brakes and finished fifth.
On his podcast, Earnhardt Jr. had one question for NASCAR. “Why are we so rigid?”
The frustration makes sense. There is a real difference between a team bending rules to go faster and a team trying to fix something that could get their driver hurt. Brake pads are a safety component. Treating a defective one the same as a performance cheat does not protect the rulebook. It just pressures teams into putting unsafe cars on the track.
Earnhardt Jr. wants a specific fix. Safety components should be replaceable under direct NASCAR supervision when a defect is confirmed. No penalty. No lost positions. Just a straightforward process that keeps drivers safe without opening the door to abuse.
NASCAR has stayed quiet. But Dale Jr. is not letting it go, and with Kraft backing him up from inside one of the sport’s most talked-about teams, he has got more than just a podcast audience paying attention.