Overview
- How it works: a 26-race regular season sets a 16-driver field by points, and the championship goes to whoever scores the most points over the final 10 races with no eliminations.
- Wins are now worth 55 points, playoff points are scrapped, and Chase seeding resets from 2,100 for the regular-season leader down to 2,000 for 16th.
- Dale Earnhardt Jr. detailed months of committee meetings that included drivers, executives and broadcasters, with Mark Martin pressing for a greater season-long emphasis.
- NASCAR executive Tim Clark said the change reflects stakeholder compromise and cautioned that a ‘perfect’ system is not realistic despite broad fan input.
- Early modeling by Frontstretch shows Kyle Larson would still have been 2025 champion under the new rules, and Shane van Gisbergen would have qualified 16th based on regular-season wins.