January 12, 2026

By Reid Spencer

NASCAR Wire Service

NASCAR is heading full-steam into the future with a return to the past.

In response to growing sentiment among fans and stakeholders in the sport, the sanctioning body has opted to revive the Chase format to crown champions in its top three national series.

In the Cup Series, NASCAR’s top division, 16 drivers will qualify for a 10-race Chase based on the number of points they score during the 26-race regular season, according to the format announcement on Monday at NASCAR’s Production Facility in Concord, N.C.

Gone is the “win-and-you’re in” provision that governed qualification in the elimination Playoff format in use from 2014 through 2025. Under the Chase format, the top 16 drivers in points will compete for the series title irrespective of the number of regular-season victories they accumulate.

To provide balance and to elevate the importance of wins in the Chase format, NASCAR will award 55 points for a victory versus 40 under the elimination system. Points for all other positions, including stage points, remain the same, though Playoff points, an important element of the elimination format, are now a thing of the past.

No longer is there Regular Season Champion, but finishing first in the standings will continue to have substantial value. The points leader after 26 races will start the 10-event Chase with 2100 points, 25 more than the second-place driver and 35 more than the third-place qualifier.

From third on down, the value of each position to start the Chase declines in five-point increments, with the 16th-place driver receiving 2000 points. Under the Chase format, there are no eliminations and no single championship race to decide the title. The driver who scores the most aggregate points in the final 10 races will be crowned champion.

In the newly christened NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, 12 drivers will compete in a nine-race Chase; in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series, 10 drivers will vie for the championship over seven races. Those numbers are commensurate with the respective proportions of the schedules of those two national divisions.

Landing on the Chase format followed lengthy discussions involving owners, drivers, manufacturers, tracks, broadcast partners and fans.

NASCAR Hall of Famer Mark Martin, a vocal advocate for a full 36-race championship format, was delighted with the compromise that revived the Chase.

“I think that this is the most perfect compromise that you could ever ask for,” Martin said at the announcement. “It's going to require our 2026 champion to be lightning fast and incredibly consistent, and that's what we can all get behind.

“So, I'm really excited. I think it's fantastic. I would just appeal to the race fans, all the race fans, but especially the classic fans who say to me, ‘I don't watch anymore.’ I say we need you. Come on back. We're headed in the right direction. Come back and join with us, and we'll keep making progress.”

Like Martin, NASCAR president Steve O’Donnell feels the return to the Chase provides a delicate balance between those who favor a full-season points race and those who prefer a postseason playoff.

“We believe we've struck that balance,” O’Donnell said. “We've got the best of both worlds where every race matters. We've talked to a lot of folks in the industry. We've run a lot of different models and believe this is the best place to land really to get back to who we are.

“That's the core of NASCAR… and we're really excited about the 2026 season.”

Chase Elliott, the 2020 Cup Series champion, grew up watching drivers compete in the Chase, the system used from 2004 through 2013, and was enthralled by what he saw.

“A lot of those years of (seven-time champion) Jimmie (Johnson) dominating and the (2011) championship of Tony (Stewart) and Carl (Edwards) all during the Chase were incredible runs. I think we oftentimes forget how good we had it through all those years of Chase format.

“I think it’s a really nice compromise. I think getting a full season was going to be a pretty big challenge, and I'm not sure there's really a better place to land than a true 10-race Chase, really similar to what we had through those years of the epic battles that we saw.”

Kyle Larson, who won his second Cup title in November at Phoenix Raceway, favors the longer format, even when it was just theoretical—and even though next year’s final race is moving to Homestead-Miami Speedway, one of his favorite tracks.

“Even though Homestead’s arguably my best track and most dominant track, I still would feel like I have a better opportunity to win a championship going off—whatever it may be—a 10-race, three-race, four-race sort of point-earning thing,” Larson said two weeks before the Chase format was announced.

“With more races, it’s a little bit more in your hands… I think what we had kind of ran its course.”

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NASCAR Cup champion Kyle Larson grows as global force in racing

January 5, 2026

By Reid Spencer

NASCAR Wire Service

KWINANA BEACH, Western Australia — Kyle Larson has no idea how winning a second NASCAR Cup Series championship will affect his standing among his peers in the NASCAR Cup Series garage.

“I haven’t been back in the NASCAR garage,” Larson said before hot laps and qualifying on Dec. 29, the second preliminary night of High Limit International racing at the Perth Motorplex, where he was defending his 2024 win in Australia’s richest sprint car race.

“Once you win the championship, everybody kind of disappears and does their own thing, so you really don’t notice it until you get back into the garage… It’s a big deal, but you really don’t see the respect from it that much until you get back to Daytona or I guess the Clash at Bowman Gray (Feb. 1).”

Larson won his second Cup title in November at Phoenix Raceway, becoming only the third full-time active driver in the series to hold more than one championship in NASCAR’s top division. Joey Logano leads with three titles, and Kyle Busch has two.

But make no mistake. Though his level of recognition may be delayed in the Cup garage, Larson already is an international superstar whose global impact has been growing exponentially.

Tony Clarke, an 80-year-old from Adelaide in South Australia, watched the broadcast of last year’s High Limit Racing event in Perth last year. Subsequently, he followed some of Larson’s exploits in Cup racing and in the Indianapolis 500.

Larson’s winning performance in the High Limits feature motivated Clarke to drive 1,600 miles across the continent through barren land where gas stations are 350 miles apart and cellular phone service is sketchy at best.

The trip took 28 hours and “two sleeps” in the car, as Clarke put it.

“I want to see Kyle Larson,” he asserted.

Told of Clarke’s journey, Larson shook his head in wonderment.

“Having the success I’ve been able to fortunately have in NASCAR the past five seasons or whatever has helped all of this,” Larson said. “I think it’s all helped translate to growing racing—NASCAR, sprint cars, even the dirt late model stuff when I was in that.

“I think racing’s just in a healthy spot right now. So, yes, it’s pretty neat to have fans travel from very far distances, within this country and even outside the country, to come watch myself race but get a chance to see others they may not have heard about yet.”

Wherever Larson goes, his reputation precedes him. Often called a “generational talent,” his success in a wide array of racing machines has defined his career.

The 2025 season was emblematic. Larson started the year by winning a Golden Driller trophy in the Tulsa Shootout for micro sprints and followed that with his third title in the Chili Bowl Nationals for midget race cars.

Driving the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, Larson won three Cup Series races and claimed the title in November by holding off Denny Hamlin after a late restart and finishing third behind Ryan Blaney and Brad Keselowski.

Larson capped the 2025 campaign with his second straight victory in the High Limit International main event in Perth, pocketing $110,000 in Australian dollars for the sprint car win.

That’s not to say that 2025 wasn’t without its disappointments. Larson’s second attempt at the Indianapolis 500/Coca-Cola 600 double ended badly and likely took its toll on the usually resilient driver.

“You think about the double, the month of May, the 600,” Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon said after the championship race at Phoenix. “It’s the first time I saw his confidence brought down a notch. I think it was a humbling experience.”

Throughout the season, Larson insisted that there was no hangover from the double attempt. In retrospect, he acknowledged there might have been.

“I would say ‘No,’ but then it’s hard to argue with the timing of all that,” said Larson, who didn’t win a Cup Series race after taking the checkered flag at Kansas Speedway on May 11. “I had a great season going to that point, then had a couple of bad weeks at Indy and went into the 600, and then all my racing kind of took a dip—Cup racing, sprint car racing, all that.

“You could argue that, OK, our cars took a dip in performance as well, but still… I guess maybe it did, but it was just bad timing—I don’t know. It did seem to all kind of come crashing down for a couple of months, but you’ve got to stick with the process and stay confident in yourself, your team and the people around you.

“I think that’s what makes the championship at the end of the year extremely meaningful.”