Where to Watch NASCAR This Weekend (October 17th, 2021)

NASCAR - Texas Motor Speedway
Sunday, October 17th - 2:00 p.m. EDT - NBC

It is championship time in the NASCAR Cup Series. The modern playoff format is not particularly good or bad at determining a deserving champion, but the rhythm of it does at least make some sense: The Round of 16, on a wide variety of interesting but relatively fair tracks, generally eliminates the pretenders, teams who made the playoff off just one win or consistently average finishes. The Round of 12, on some of NASCAR's wildest and most difficult tracks, eliminates one or two great cars as it pares the field down to just those with a real shot at a championship. This leads us here, to the Round of 8, where drivers who came into the season expecting a shot at a title reckon with the reality that only four will still have that shot when the series heads to Phoenix in three weeks.