NASCAR’s officiating sucks and it will kill the sport if nothing is done in the next 20 years

I agree with you. Zeroing out the points at the start of the playoffs makes things needlessly complicated. And dividing the races up into stages with a white and green checkered flag at each stage, in my eyes, is just a way to trick those randomly surfing through channels into thinking, "Oh, boy, I tuned in at the right time! There's only five laps left!", only to find that it's not the end of a race, but just the end of a stage of the race.