How the NASCAR playoffs work: the Chase format explained
Kyle Larson didn't win a single race in the 2026 regular season. Then he won three of the ten playoff races, finished in the top 10 in eight of them, and clinched the Cup Series title before the first stage of the finale was over.
Under the format NASCAR used from 2014 through 2025, that run could have counted for nothing. One bad race in an elimination round could knock a driver out, and the title came down to whichever of four finalists finished best on the last day. For 2026, NASCAR scrapped that and brought back the Chase: one ten-race stretch, decided on points, with nobody eliminated. Here's how it works. The format details come from NASCAR's announcements on nascar.com (January 12 and August 31, 2026), checked on November 11, 2026.
The short version
- The Cup Series runs 26 regular-season races, then the 10-race Chase.
- The top 16 drivers in regular-season points make the Chase. A win no longer guarantees a spot.
- Those 16 drivers have their points reset, with a head start for the best regular season.
- There are no elimination rounds. All 16 race all 10 Chase races for the title.
- After the finale, the Chase driver with the most points is the champion.
How points work in a race
A race win is now worth 55 points, up from 40. Second place pays 35, third 34, and it keeps stepping down from there. Races are split into stages, and the top 10 at the end of each stage score extra points, 10 for winning the stage down to 1 for tenth. Those stage points are added on top of what a driver earns at the finish.
The bigger win bonus is the point of the change. Under the old points, a driver who won a race beat second place by only 5 points, so a steady top-five driver could rack up nearly as much as a winner. Now the gap is 20, which makes it worth taking a risk for the lead late in a race.
The old "playoff points," the bonus points drivers banked for wins and stage wins and carried through the playoff rounds, are gone. Stages stayed. The banked bonuses didn't.
Getting in: points, not wins
For more than a decade, the rule was "win and you're in." A driver who won one race could make the playoffs even with a poor season otherwise. That's over. The 16 Chase spots go strictly to the top 16 in the regular-season standings. A surprise winner at a superspeedway still collects 55 points, but not an automatic ticket.
The reset
When the Chase starts, the 16 drivers' points are reset based on where they finished the regular season. This is the only reset of the year.
| Regular-season finish | Chase starting points |
|---|---|
| 1st (regular-season champion) | 2,100 |
| 2nd | 2,075 |
| 3rd | 2,065 |
| 4th | 2,060 |
| 5th through 15th | 5 fewer for each place |
| 16th | 2,000 |
The regular-season champion starts 25 points clear of second place and 100 clear of 16th. That's a real reward, roughly half a race win, but not enough to coast. And 100 points is less than two wins' worth, so a driver who starts 16th isn't out of it.
Advancing and elimination
There's nothing to advance through. The old format ran three three-race rounds, cut four drivers after each one, and sent the last four to a winner-take-all final. The Chase has no cut lines. All 16 drivers stay eligible through the last lap of the season, and every race counts the same.
Drivers who aren't in the Chase still race every week and still score points. They just can't win the title. That matters to the 16 contenders, because a non-Chase driver who wins takes 55 points that would otherwise have gone to someone fighting for the championship.
The flip side is that a title can be wrapped up before the finale is over, or even before it starts, the same way it works in Formula 1. Once a driver's lead is bigger than what the second-place driver can still score, it's done.
The championship race
The 2026 Chase opened at Darlington on September 6 and ended at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 8. There was no separate final four. Homestead was simply the tenth Chase race, and the champion was whoever had the most points among the 16 when it ended.
Larson went to Homestead 67 points ahead of Christopher Bell and needed nine more to lock it up. He finished fourth in the opening stage, Bell didn't win it, and that settled it with most of the race still to run. Larson finished 12th. Ryan Blaney passed Tyler Reddick with a little more than a lap to go to win the race. It's Larson's third Cup title after 2021 and 2025, and his second in a row.
What we've seen this season
The two Chase races I'd show someone to explain the format:
- Talladega, October 25. The race went to overtime after a big late crash, and Larson went from 11th to first in the last two corners to beat William Byron by a few feet. It was his first Cup win at Talladega and his first on a superspeedway, and it put him 73 points clear with two races left.
- Homestead-Miami, November 8. The title was settled in the first stage, and the race itself still came down to Blaney's pass on Reddick at the end.
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