{"id":884282,"date":"2026-09-05T12:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T12:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/884282\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T12:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T12:30:15","slug":"nascar-chase-format-16-driver-competition-rules-balance-fun-fairness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/884282\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Chase Format: 16-Driver Competition Rules Balance Fun, Fairness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNASCAR<\/a>\u2019s 10-race \u201cChase\u201d for a championship begins Saturday night, and with it, the latest attempt at perfecting a formula to award a sport\u2019s biggest prize.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLast offseason, NASCAR dumped its previous playoff format, which culminated in a single race to crown a winner among four finalist drivers. Introduced in 2013 to amp up the drama at the end of the season, drivers and fans found the elimination-style postseason a bit\u00a0too\u00a0unpredictable, with the year\u2019s top car on a season-long basis not winning the trophy since 2021.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, a late caution ultimately cost Denny Hamlin<\/a> a chance at his first championship in 20 full seasons on the circuit. \u201cIn this moment, I never want to race a car again,\u201d Hamlin said afterwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut he came back, and now the 45-year-old is the favorite to win this year, with 10 events to rack up more points than the 15 other competitors still alive in the title race. As the \u201cNo. 1 seed,\u201d Hamlin starts with more points in a format designed to reward both consistency and victories down the stretch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think all of the drivers would tell you it\u2019s a more fair way to do it,\u201d Hamlin said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tNASCAR isn\u2019t alone in tweaking its end-of-year schedule. The PGA Tour recently announced a bracket-style match play title event, beginning in 2028. MLS is reportedly considering moving to a 20-team structure with double-elimination for top seeds. Meanwhile, tournaments from the College Football Playoff to MLB\u2019s postseason keep expanding, adding valuable, high-stakes inventory at the cost of increased variance and potentially making the regular season feel extra regular.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo far, NASCAR seems to be seeing positive results.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur fans, our partners, and arguably most important, our competitors are all very much bought into this idea,\u201d NASCAR EVP and chief brand officer Tim Clark said Friday, adding that the hope is this new system will survive into future years with only minimal tweaks. \u201cWhat we are going to try to get out of the habit of is just tinkering over things constantly in favor of some stability.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDrivers appear to largely be on board, and fans have responded as well, even though many advocated for eliminating the end-of-season spotlight entirely in favor of a Premier League-style yearlong title race. Debates continue about how exactly to define the sport\u2019s regular and postseason, considering all drivers keep racing until the final weekend\u2014and whether it means anything to \u201cwin\u201d the regular season. NASCAR eliminated the trophy for that accomplishment in its latest shakeup.<\/p>\n

\n\tNASCAR said admissions at races this year were up 9%. While TV ratings have fluctuated throughout the year, NASCAR saw a 6% viewership bump on NBC for its regular season finale in Daytona last weekend, as Ryan Preece leapt over the Chase cutline with a final-lap pass of Zane Smith for the Coke Zero Sugar 400 win.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNASCAR now hopes the Chase can help the sport hold fan attention into football season.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, Preece\u2019s move into the field meant bumping out another driver. In the old format, Shane van Gisbergen\u2019s road-course dominance would\u2019ve automatically qualified him for the playoff field thanks to two wins at extra curvy tracks this summer. Instead, he\u2019s on the outside looking in, 17th in points and unable to move up the rest of the way due to the how points are adjusted heading into the season\u2019s home stretch.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s bullshit,\u201d Hamlin\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0on his own podcast this week, when he learned how the standings now work. \u201cLocking these guys out of being able to advance their position, that\u2019s unfair.\u201d The chase for a perfect playoffs<\/a> structure continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR\u2019s 10-race \u201cChase\u201d for a championship begins Saturday night, and with it, the latest attempt at perfecting a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,3932,634,36547,82],"class_list":["post-884282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-denny-hamlin","tag-nascar","tag-playoffs","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884282","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=884282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}