The Supercars have just pulled off a NASCAR-style playoff setup this season, and boy has it backfired the same way, if not bigger. What started as an attempt to keep the title fight alive until the final weekend has turned into a full-blown identity crisis for Australia’s premier touring-car series.

For 2025, Supercars split the season into three parts: a regular Sprint Cup over the first eight rounds, an Enduro Cup, and then a knockout Finals Series where points get reset and drivers get eliminated round by round. Ring any bells?

Just like what happened in NASCAR, this late-season points reset has wiped out months of hard work. The complaints started from day one. A driver can dominate the first twenty races, build a huge lead the old-fashioned way, and then suddenly start the Finals tied with someone who barely scraped top-ten all year. That’s exactly what happened in the Supercars finale.

Broc Feeney has dominated most of the season, and if it were a points format, he would’ve wrapped it up first. But his car got spun in the race by the #2 of Ryan Wood, who’s Chaz Mostert’s teammate, the driver in second place as per that format. He fell to fifth place post the race.

On top of that, Supercars flirted with NASCAR-style overtime restarts, known as green-white-checkered finishes, and quickly realized endurance racing built on strategy doesn’t mix well with last-lap demolition derbies. Officials are already threatening fines of over four hundred thousand Australian dollars if anyone tries to game the system or wreck someone on purpose. When you have to warn drivers not to cheat before the season even ends, you know the format is stressing everyone out.

Chaz Mostert won the first title under the new rules, and even he might admit the system isn’t perfect, but he likes that the championship actually went to the final weekend. Plenty of others aren’t so sure. The series that used to pride itself on consistency, reliability, and season-long excellence now crowns its champion in a three-weekend sprint where one bad pit stop or one crash can erase an entire year.

As soon as the checkered flag dropped on the 2025 season, fans on NASCAR let loose.

Fans are absolutely roasting Supercars

One fan summed it up perfectly: “Man, these guys are getting the controversy in early. They’re gonna learn quick why this is a bad idea.”

And they really did learn quick. The Finals knockouts meant drivers who were running away with the points suddenly had everything on the line in a single weekend. Sound familiar?

“Well, they were idiots just like the decision makers in NASCAR.”

Harsh, but you can see where it’s coming from. Plenty of people argued the traditional full-season points system rewarded the best driver all year, not the one who got hot for three races in November.

Someone else nailed the bigger worry: “They’re following the classic NASCAR playbook. Make the racing itself less interesting than before. Instead of actually fixing it, just add playoffs as a bandaid.”

That one hurts because a lot of longtime fans feel the same. They think Supercars slapped a shiny new format on the championship instead of fixing parity or cost issues that actually needed attention.

The jokes kept coming. “Hahahah, those idiots added playoffs? What kinda joke of a motorsport would do playoffs? It’s racing, not stick and ball sports.”

That one points out the obvious: every driver races the same guys every round, so why pretend the first ten months are preseason?

Another fan laughed: “So you’re telling me that Supercars just speedran NASCAR’s playoff controversies.”

Twenty years of American debates about game-seven moments versus real champions were compressed into one Australian season.

And finally, the one that probably stings the most: “Australian Supercars debasing itself with playoffs is a damn shame. Everything else about that series is awesome.”

Because for a lot of people, that’s the heart of it. The cars are gorgeous, the tracks are legendary, and the racing used to be pure. Now it feels like someone looked at NASCAR, copied the homework, and is getting laughed at for the same reasons.

Whether Supercars sticks with the Finals Series or quietly walks it back in a couple of years, one thing is clear: copying someone else’s big swing doesn’t make the backlash any softer. The fans have spoken, and right now they’re not exactly waving the new format’s flag.