Dale Earnhardt Jr. admits he’s ‘Roval’d out,’ unconvinced by 2025 NASCAR playoff format

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is finding it difficult to enjoy the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. After this past Sunday’s Round of 12 finale at the Charlotte ROVAL, Earnhardt admitted he is “ROVAL’d out.”

Earnhardt reiterated his belief that he favors a 36-race, season-long format to decide a champion. He added that this year’s playoffs have left him “exhausted.”

“I’m ROVAL’d out. I am ROVAL’d the hell out,” Earnhardt said on Tuesday’s Dale Jr. Download. “… Everybody knows that I like a season-long format. Whatever they go to, whether it’s the four-race final round or if they go to the original Chase of a 10-race. I don’t know what they’re going to do. All that will be great. I’m not gonna be ‘ah, darn it,’ if the full-season thing doesn’t come back because I don’t really think that’s where NASCAR is going to go. So, I’m ready for that mentally.

“But man, I am exhausted. Something about this particular year’s playoff is just not doing it for me.”

Talk of the playoff format and whether that will look different next year has dominated discussion off the racetrack. NASCAR president Steve O’Donnell told Earnhardt in an interview this week that nothing will be announced before the end of the season.

The current format invites drama, and we saw that on the final lap at the ROVAL. Needing to pass Denny Hamlin to advance to the Round of 8 ahead of Joey Logano, Ross Chastain wiped out Hamlin on the last corner. He spun himself out in the process, driving backwards to the start/finish line. That is how Chastain’s playoffs came to an end.

Earnhardt wasn’t fired up seeing Chastain make a “zero-percent shot.” He certainly didn’t become more in love with the playoffs after Logano talked them up in his post-race interview.

“There’s a lot of people with very good points about this year, what happens at the end of the race with Chastain and Denny. I saw that, and I watched it, and I’m like, ‘Meh.’ I didn’t go, ‘Oh damn, wow. Chastain going backwards.’ I wasn’t that blown away by it. I saw a guy making a zero-percent shot, it’s like a full court f*cking heave that wasn’t going in,” Earnhardt said. “And so, it wasn’t like, ‘If we don’t have the playoffs, we don’t have that.’ Well, I didn’t want that. I didn’t need that. That didn’t make me go, ‘Damn, I’m glad we got the playoffs so I can see that.’

“The more Joey Logano gets out of his car and tells me about the playoffs, the more I don’t like the playoffs. I know he’s defending it, and I know he believes what he believes, and I’m good with that for him. But the more he tells me why I should like the playoffs, the less I like them.”