Jan. 20, 2026, 2:04 p.m. ET<\/p>\n
NASCAR has made a significant change to its waiver policy for the 2026 season. In a new rulebook update, a driver who gets a waiver won’t receive a penalty for the “Chase” regarding their bonus points, as long as NASCAR approves the absence. This means a suspension will no longer wipe out a driver’s bonus points in 2026.<\/p>\n
In 2025, Austin Hill was suspended for intentionally wrecking Aric Almirola at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Hill lost all of his playoff points, starting the playoffs with a base of 2,000 points. The Richard Childress Racing driver was eventually eliminated in the Round of 12 after not earning enough points to advance.<\/p>\n
However, if a waiver is granted but it is not a NASCAR-approved absence, the driver would start the Chase with 2,000 points in the NASCAR Cup Series. A suspension is still a massive penalty for a driver, but it won’t come with a full bonus points reset as it did with last year’s waiver policy.<\/p>\n
More: Xfinity expands relationship with 23XI Racing for 2026 NASCAR season<\/a>Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 20, 2026, 2:04 p.m. ET NASCAR has made a significant change to its waiver policy for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[159202,49,48,634,82,161408,160874,160875,160878,159750,159089,159085],"class_list":["post-423523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-accessfree","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports","tag-sstssportsmotornascar","tag-sstsnnascar","tag-tagauto-racing","tag-tagnascar","tag-tagoverall-negative","tag-tagsports-news","tag-typestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423523","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=423523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}