While we aren’t going to hear anything concrete until January, Kaulig Racing CEO Chris Rice believes fans will like what NASCAR comes up with. Does that mean full-season points? Well, it doesn’t sound like it from what Rice has said.

It feels like we should have already heard about the 2026 points/championship format. Everyone expected an announcement shortly after the season ended. Then a bit of drama happened in NASCAR with the infamous Richard Childress-Steve Phelps texts, and the trial soon after. So, perhaps there is a reason why it has been delayed.

Chris Rice was on the Kenny Wallace Show, and he talked about the future championship format. No details, and he isn’t sure what the final decision will be, but he believes fans will enjoy what NASCAR ends up going with.

“It got put on the back burner. I talk to Mark Martin a lot, believe it or not. You’re gonna like it,” Rice explained to Wallace. “You will like it. It’s not exactly what everybody’s posting about. They hadn’t made a final decision the last time I was involved. We need an adjustment. Do we need an overhaul? No. But we do need an adjustment. I enjoy going back to Homestead, but we don’t need one race to make the difference. Because we know going to Homestead, if Kyle Larson is in the final four, who the heck do you think is going to win? If Tyler Reddick is in the final four, who the heck do you think is going to have a shot? Like, come on.

‘So, they recognize that. The fans have been vocal. … We listened as a sport, and it’s going to be great. What I do know is, I feel like 75% of the people are going to love it, 10% are going to be uhhh, okay. And that’s going to leave 15% of the people that’s going to hate it. So, with that being said, the traditional way of doing points would be tough to do in this era. Because we are looking towards a younger group of people, right? So, that’s what we got to think about.

“Me and you, man, I go back and watch them old races on Tubi, and dude, there might be one car on the lead lap, and somebody’s winning the points series by 487 points. I mean, that ain’t exciting to the young guy, or the young woman. So, we gotta make it exciting. And our attention spans, my social media guy says, remember Chris, 30 seconds long, not 4 hours.”

So, what should we take from that? For me, it sounds like Chris Rice knows a full-season points format won’t happen. He basically derides such a format in the words above. While we don’t know exactly what the championship will look like, the playoffs are going to stay. That is how NASCAR fans should approach this situation, until proven otherwise.

I’d argue that instead of a more exciting format, go with one that is simplest. The driver who earns the most points over the course of 36 races sounds simple enough to me. Easy to understand for this Gen Z sportswriter and his attention span.