{"id":406936,"date":"2026-01-13T18:43:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T18:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/406936\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T18:43:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T18:43:16","slug":"top-five-moments-in-nascars-first-chase-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/406936\/","title":{"rendered":"Top five moments in NASCAR&#8217;s first &#8216;Chase&#8217; era"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nascar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NASCAR\u00a0<\/a>on Monday announced the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nascar\/articles\/nascar_returns_to_chase_format_to_decide_champions_in_26_and_beyond\/s1_13132_43322169\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">\u00a0return of the Chase<\/a> format to decide its champions for 2026 and beyond, where the top 16 drivers after 26 races will battle it out in a 10-race postseason for the NASCAR Cup Series championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>NASCAR previously used the format \u2014 although with only 10 drivers, not 16 \u2014 from 2004-13. Here are the five greatest moments from the first Chase era.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>5. Matt Kenseth sneaks through at Talladega (2012)<\/p>\n<p>The 2012 Talladega Chase race was set to come down to a two-lap shootout with multiple Chase drivers at the front of the field. That included Matt Kenseth, Clint Bowyer, Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart, among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On the last lap, however, a massive crash was triggered when Stewart got turned by Michael Waltrip in Turn 3. As the field flew apart behind him, Kenseth watched the wreck happen in his rearview mirror and took the race win.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR\u00a0on Monday announced the\u00a0return of the Chase format to decide its champions for 2026 and beyond, where the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-406936","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\/406936","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=406936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}