Does Harrison Burton deserve a spot in the playoffs? This is the question of the hour in NASCAR. Everyone is talking about it, and now the eligibility of letting a driver from P34 take a spot in the playoffs is starting to be questioned. Before his win at Daytona, Harrison Burton was having an underwhelming season, to say the least.

Burton scored his maiden victory at the Coke Zero Sugar 400 on August 24, and with that, he brought home the 100th victory for Wood Brothers Racing. According to the playoff rules, this spot is Burton’s for the taking, and that is making some fans unhappy. Burton has heard what the fans are saying, but as he prepares for the playoffs, his confidence is unshakable.

Harrison Burton breaks down his thoughts heading into the playoffs

Before the final race of the season started, Bob Pockrass met with Harrison Burton to ask if he had heard what the fans were saying. Pockrass asked the 23-year-old, “I know I’m guilty of this, but do you take offense when people say, ‘Well, should there be a top 30-year-old back or anything like that?'”

The young driver seemed unfazed by this as he responded, “No, not really. I get it, right? Like, we haven’t put the consistency together that some other guys have or, you know, whatnot. But also, on the other hand, those were the rules before the year, so they changed it.”

Now that he is already in the playoffs, he knows that he will continue to race in the top 16. Knowing that NASCAR has made the official decision to have him in the playoffs, he said, “But it doesn’t affect our situation right now. The only thing that’s frustrating is that it kind of took away a little bit from the effort they put in. I said they deserve to be in the playoffs. I feel like they’ve done a really good job all year.”

Saying “rules are rules,” he explained that he did not go ahead and ask for a playoff spot. All he did was win a race, and according to the format, he will be in the top 16. The fact that before winning the race, he was P34 does not change the fact that he won fair and square. He concluded by saying, “I just won the race, and that’s what happens. So now we’re working, we’re going to earn our spot.”

While Harrison Burton won a clean race to make it to the playoffs, the same cannot be said about Austin Dillon. Dillon did win a race this season, but NASCAR decided not to let him participate in the playoffs. So why does Burton get into the playoffs and not Dillon?

The difference between Harrison Burton and Austin Dillon’s case

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Harrison Burton and Austin Dillon both faced intense last-lap battles, but their paths to victory were strikingly different. Burton edged out Kyle Busch with a clean, door-to-door race, aided slightly by Parker Kligerman, while Dillon’s win came through wrecking Joey Logano on the final lap.

Harrison Burton made a dramatic move on the final lap at Daytona, passing Kyle Busch to win the Coke Zero Sugar 400 by a razor-thin margin of 0.047 seconds. While the victory was sweet, Burton admits to having mixed feelings when he watches the video of those intense final two overtime laps. He said, “I think I‘ll be a race car driver next year, so that‘s great, I don‘t know where exactly, or what series — I don‘t know. I think it‘s all fluid. I feel like (I‘m getting) close to where I feel good about a couple things. I feel like I‘m in a place now where the places I‘m going to go in the future want me and genuinely want me as a race car driver to go and help them try to win races.”

For Dillon, it has been more than 2 weeks of extended drama aside from what happened on the track. A disappointed Richard Childress was heard saying after the second hearing, “Their ruling has changed NASCAR racing on the final lap, forever. The drivers, now, know where the line is, or they think they do. If you go in a car length and 2-3-quarters was exactly how far back he was, and the other car slows down three miles-per-hour, on the last lap, you’re going to bump him a little to get him up the race track. Is that over now? What is the line?”

Wrecking two cars to take the win was what Austin Dillon resorted to, and that’s why NASCAR decided to strip away his playoff spot. If Dillon had not wrecked two cars at the very last moments of the race, NASCAR would have granted him the spot as it would have been a fair race.

So again, we ask you, considering all this, does Harrison Burton deserve a spot in the playoffs? Share your opinion in the comments below.