{"id":362237,"date":"2025-12-22T18:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T18:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/362237\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T18:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T18:48:08","slug":"kaulig-racing-ceo-chris-rice-believes-nascar-fans-will-like-new-points-playoff-format","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/362237\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaulig Racing CEO Chris Rice believes NASCAR fans will like new points, playoff format"},"content":{"rendered":"

While we aren\u2019t going to hear anything concrete until January, Kaulig Racing CEO Chris Rice believes fans will like what NASCAR <\/a>comes up with. Does that mean full-season points? Well, it doesn\u2019t sound like it from what Rice has said. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Chris Rice was on the Kenny Wallace Show, and he talked about the future championship format. No details, and he isn\u2019t sure what the final decision will be, but he believes fans will enjoy what NASCAR ends up going with. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt got put on the back burner. I talk to Mark Martin a lot, believe it or not. You\u2019re gonna like it,\u201d Rice explained to Wallace<\/a>. \u201cYou will like it. It\u2019s not exactly what everybody\u2019s posting about. They hadn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n

\u2018So, they recognize that. The fans have been vocal. \u2026 We listened as a sport, and it\u2019s 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\u2019s going to leave 15% of the people that\u2019s 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\u2019s what we got to think about. <\/p>\n

\u201cMe 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\u2019s winning the points series by 487 points. I mean, that ain\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, what should we take from that? For me, it sounds like Chris Rice knows a full-season points format won\u2019t happen. He basically derides such a format in the words above. While we don\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n

I\u2019d 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While we aren\u2019t going to hear anything concrete until January, Kaulig Racing CEO Chris Rice believes fans will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-362237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}