{"id":412088,"date":"2026-01-16T01:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T01:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/412088\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T01:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T01:15:13","slug":"dale-earnhardt-jr-details-how-race-strategy-might-change-after-nascar-returns-to-chase-format","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/412088\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr. details how race strategy might change after NASCAR returns to Chase format"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/pro\/category\/nascar\/news\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NASCAR<\/a> season will see the return of the \u201cChase\u201d style championship format. NASCAR made the announcement Monday, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is interested to see how the new format changes teams\u2019 strategy during races. <\/p>\n<p>Earnhardt raced full-time for the entirety of the original Chase. He knows there will be drivers prioritizing points over doing everything they can to win. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t know what we\u2019re gonna see in some scenarios,\u201d Earnhardt said on his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ublcIeUgaX4&amp;t=6s\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dale Jr. Download<\/a> podcast. \u201c\u2026 The stage points will still be important, we know that guys will strategize sometimes to actually take away their chances of winning the race to gain more stage points, we\u2019ve seen guys do that. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe green flag will drop, they\u2019ll start racing and the guy will go, \u2018Our f*cking car ain\u2019t good enough today but if I do this and this, I can get these stage points, and we\u2019ll just see where we end up in the final stage and we\u2019ve got the third most points even though we finished eighth.\u2019 So, they\u2019ll do that, we know they will.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>NASCAR kills win-and-in, increases importance on winning<\/p>\n<p>That being said, NASCAR is placing more importance on winning under the new format. NASCAR will increase points for race wins from 40 to 55, to ensure victories still carry significant weight, while the regular season points leader will enter the Chase with a 25-point advantage.<\/p>\n<p>The win-and-in element of the previous format is gone. Given the points increase for winning, Earnhardt still believes you\u2019ll see drivers realizing how important it is to get to Victory Lane. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, since we\u2019ve added some more points to winning, that becomes more important,\u201d Earnhardt said. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna see people still do a little bit of stage racing but less because winning, points wise, means so much. When these guys start to realize how important it is to be in one of the top five seeds, when they realize the advantage of being a top two seed, they\u2019re gonna have to get points, points, points all year long. That\u2019s winning races, that\u2019s running in the top three.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 NASCAR season will see the return of the \u201cChase\u201d style championship format. NASCAR made the announcement&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-412088","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\/412088","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=412088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}