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Starting from 2026, NASCAR will adopt a \u2018Chase\u2019 style championship format. It is a \u2018compromise\u2019, as Mark Martin said, between the playoffs and the full-season points format. But even with a single top-16 cutoff with a 10-race postseason in place, drivers will not shake off memories of the past format so easily, let alone expect fans to forget the past and boost popularity for the sport.<\/p>\n
![\"NASCAR,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/fe57afa813b670a212a7082445dbb9b2.jpeg\"\/)
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NASCAR, Motorsport, USA Clash at Bowman Gray Feb 2, 2025 Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA NASCAR Cup Series driver Chase Elliot 9 and NASCAR Cup Series driver Chris Buescher 17 lead the field during the Clash at Bowman Gray at Bowman Gray Stadium.<\/p>\n
2025 produced a series of heartbreaks in the sport. Denny Hamlin<\/a> was dangerously close to clinching a Cup championship after 19 years of competition. Connor Zilisch almost won the Xfinity title after a 10-win season. Neither could get it done due to the playoff format. Then the long string of wrecks in the sport \u2013 from Austin Dillon\u2019s wild bump-and-run in the 2024 Richmond race to Carson Hocevar\u2019s aggressive antics \u2013 all spelled the desperate situation that the playoffs put drivers in.<\/p>\n So shaking off those habits will be difficult, as per Jeff Burton<\/a>\u2018s words. Yet the 21-time Cup Series race winner acknowledged that NASCAR is at least in the right direction now.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cI think this is the latest move to try to draw the sport where it needs to be. And in this case, it\u2019s by looking backwards. It\u2019s by saying, \u201cHey, we tried to look forward in these ways, and it didn\u2019t work. So, let\u2019s look backwards. Let\u2019s look at what our fans truly expect us to be, make an adjustment. NASCAR had the courage to say, \u201cOkay, we got let\u2019s they had the courage to make changes that they thought ultimately would be good long-term decisions. They now had the courage to say, \u201cWe were wrong. Let\u2019s go back.\u201d<\/p>\n While he warned NASCAR of a long-term effort, he also urged fans to help out.<\/p>\n A plea to give the sport a chance<\/p>\n In terms of popularity, NASCAR has shrunk. In 2025, television viewership for the Cup Series dropped approximately 14.7% year-over-year to an average of 2.45 million viewers, reaching record lows. Fans planning their entire weekends to devote to NASCAR racing are now a rarity. Several factors have led to this situation. These range from a faulty Next-Gen car and an unfair championship format to low horsepower and poor race coverage.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Now, however, NASCAR is on a path to change \u2013 and Jeff Burton urged fans to give it a chance. \u201cThey really made some decisions they thought were best for you, and they were wrong. Yeah. So they\u2019re righting the ship. They\u2019re righting it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you can choose to stay mad at it. Like that\u2019s your choice. And if that\u2019s the direction you go, then that\u2019s the direction you go. I don\u2019t think anyone should tell you how you should think or how you should feel or what you should do. I would ask you that you give NASCAR a second chance.\u201d<\/p>\n With a new season just a few weeks away, let\u2019s see what unfolds. Will NASCAR right the ship in 2026, or will it take time?<\/p>\n The post Jeff Burton Warns NASCAR There\u2019s No Magic Fix After Admitting It Was Wrong<\/a> appeared first on EssentiallySports<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe most perfect compromise that you could ever ask for,\u201d Mark Martin ecstatically said two weeks ago. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,3140,112960,74381,634,50997,82],"class_list":["post-432296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cup-series","tag-harrison-burton","tag-jeff-burton","tag-nascar","tag-playoff-format","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432296","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=432296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}