Anyone who seriously thought NASCAR would jump from playoffs to full 36 race points was huffing too much copium. The Chase is, in my opinion, a good middle ground between the end of year race for the cup that the Playoffs prioritized, and a consistency based points system that doesn't award mediocre retards like Joey.
The new format has 16 drivers, no wildcards and no win-and-your-in, the last 10 races for Cup are Chase races. O'Reilly and Trucks have slight different variants of this base format.