NASCAR legend Richard Petty has voiced his opinion on what he thinks is the perfect championship format. It all happened in a soon-to-drop episode of his Petty Race Recap podcast starring retired NASCAR Grand National/Winston Cup Series crew chief Dale Inman.Petty isn’t a fan of the current playoff format. Instead, he affirmed a year-long championship format in which the best driver throughout the 36-race NASCAR season receives the titular crown.“I still think to have a champion of NASCAR that is a year-long championship,” Richard Petty said. “It's not a one-race championship, it's not a four-race championship..it should be...if we run 36 races, who is the best out of those 36...they should be the champion.”Even Inman agreed to that. He said,“I'm with Richard on that. First race, they start it...36 races, they end it and whoever's got the most points is the champion.”Last year, the NASCAR aficionados witnessed Joey Logano winning his third Cup Series championship with an average finish of 17.1, the lowest of any NASCAR champion in the history of the sport. Kyle Larson, on the other hand, did not even make the Championship 4, even though he amassed six wins.Like Richard Petty, several NASCAR pundits, including the fans, have vouched for a different playoff format, perhaps a system that hands the championship to the best driver over the course of the season. But Logano isn’t one of them. Explaining his stance, the Team Penske driver said in a recent statement,“I don't understand what people don't like about it. I really don't get it… I'm not just saying that because it works for us. I'm saying it because it's true.”NASCAR has confirmed that it has been in talks with its internal playoffs committee about tweaking the postseason segment in 2026.“We’ve got no leaders”- Richard Petty notes the absence of superstars in the current NASCAR sceneRichard Petty thinks that the current NASCAR grid suffers from a lack of superstars. Petty, a seven-time Cup Series champion, was one during his time. There were Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Darrel Waltrip in the 1980s, and drivers like Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson in the 1990s and 2000s.But today, Petty doesn’t see anyone worthy of being called a leader. He thinks that the crowd is just too big.“We’ve got no leaders,” Richard Petty told Jeff Gluck of The Athletic. “We’ve had, what, 15 different winners this year? That does not create a following. No matter what happens, you need a fox out front. We don’t have any leader; whether he’s good, bad or indifferent.”When Waltrip was winning races back in the day, the fans would call him ‘Jaws’ and come to see him either win or be defeated. The same goes for Earnhardt, who was also a seven-time Cup champ like Petty.“Right now, we don’t have that. I think it takes a little prestige away from what we’re doing,” Petty further explained.Next stop is Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which will host next week’s race, the first of the Round of 8. Named South Point 400, the 267-lap event will be televised on USA (5:30 pm ET) with live radio updates on PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.