Despite hopes for change, NASCAR championship weekend will return to Phoenix in 2025

For the location of NASCAR's championship-deciding race each fall to be ideal, it should be free of weather concerns and offer exciting action on the track. Phoenix Raceway has only been able to fully deliver on one of those traits over the last few years, but that's going to be enough to hold onto its prized season-finale slot for at least one more season.

NASCAR announced Wednesday that its championship weekend will return to Phoenix Raceway for 2025, culminating with the Cup Series championship race on Sunday, Nov. 2, on NBC Sports. It will be the sixth consecutive year that Phoenix has hosted the final races of NASCAR's three top national series (Truck Series, Xfinity Series, Cup Series) after Homestead-Miami Speedway held that honor from 2002-19.

While Phoenix Raceway has been lauded as a top notch facility and certainly avoids weather issues in early November, it has been swept up in a larger overall trend for the NASCAR Cup Series since the introduction of the Next Gen car in 2022 – namely, that the racing has been less competitive and exciting on tracks one mile or less in length.

In Jeff Gluck's "Was it a good race?" poll, a decidedly unscientific tool that nevertheless serves as a good gauge of how NASCAR fans are feeling, Phoenix has fared poorly in the Next Gen era. The 2022 Cup Series championship race was ranked among the 15 worst races in the poll's history, with just 28% of voters feeling it was a good race. Both the 2023 and 2024 spring races at the track also fell under 50%.

The best racing with the current Cup Series cars has been on mile-and-a-half tracks, leading to some hope that NASCAR might choose one of its intermediate circuits for the 2025 finale. There's also a school of thought that the championship race should rotate yearly like the NFL does with the Super Bowl.

NASCAR hasn't chosen to go that route but is following the NFL's lead in terms of slowly dripping interesting parts of next year's schedule over time. Fans now know a couple of key dates for 2025 – including where the season will end – and will have to have faith that the racing product at Phoenix will improve before the Cup Series crowns its champion next fall.