NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell alongside Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, and Chase Briscoe announced that the series will return to The Chase format for 2026.

The new format for the Cup series will see the first 26 races based on a points system and the final 10 races making up the Chase. In the O’Reilly and Trucks series it will be 9 races and 7 races for the Chase. 16 drivers will make the cut for the Chase in the Cup Series while only 12 and 10 in the O’Reilly and Trucks series. The points system is being modified slightly. Instead of drivers receiving 40 points for a win, they will receive 55 points.

Whoever, wins the regular season will receive 2100 points to start and will have a 25-point lead over second place, and a 35-point lead over third place. It will then decrease by 5 points through the 16th position.

One major thing O’Donnell and NASCAR did not address is whether they plan to change the group of 10 tracks at the end of each season.

Nevertheless, after the initial announcement and details were revealed about the new format, NASCAR opened up the press conference to a Q&A session. As part of that session, O’Donnell was asked by Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass, “How close, if at all, did you come to going to a full race or full season points and what was the determining factor not to go there?”

O’Donnell answered, “We looked at everything. I think the leader probably to begin with was maybe a longer four-race championship format that some I think some people thought about. Then it was five. What would the different mix of tracks be? And then really it narrowed down to a full season or some type of a chase. And just looking at both of those-. There are a lot of fans. Yes, there are a lot of vocal fans on social media. Those aren’t all of our fans. And there are a lot of fans who like playoffs or like a playoff format as well. So we felt like this was a great balance. And it’s simple. There’s no playoff points and all those things.”

“Ryan McGee said it best, I think, in the committee, that you need to get on the elevator, get to the 20th floor, and be able to explain this to somebody,” he continued. “And we can finally do that. We couldn’t do that in the past. It was really challenging.”

“And so, this we feel, like as Mark [Martin] said, is the best of both worlds. And it gives us room to take a look at it. It won’t be perfect. We’ll learn some things along the way. We got the smartest Group of engineers, and, drivers, and teams that’ll look at this and say, ‘Here we go. Here’s how I’m going to go after it.’ And we’ll learn some things along the way as well.”

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