NASCAR’s Search for a New Playoff: What You Need to Know (So Far)
What’s Happening? NASCAR is publicly seeking a new Playoff or even Championship Points system for the future. This story will unfold…
Gifts for NASCAR Fans
Kaulig Racing CEO Chris Rice spoke on what he knows about NASCAR’s potential new point system while also addressing why he thinks the sport won’t return to a full-season points system in a recent interview.
With the 2026 NASCAR season just a few months away, most of the sport’s teams have set their lineups, found their new sponsors, and even changed OEMs for the new year, but one major piece of the 2026 puzzle is still sitting in the hands of NASCAR.
Throughout the 2025 season, the sport publicly looked into modifying, or even moving on from, its current playoff system.
Despite recent radio silence regarding this search for a new playoff system, prior to the end of the 2025 season, the general consensus was that NASCAR would ultimately move to a new playoff format in the coming year.
One executive with knowledge of this proposed new format is Kaulig Racing CEO Chris Rice, who reignited the playoff debate thanks to a new clip from a recent interview with Kenny Wallace.
What’s Happening? NASCAR is publicly seeking a new Playoff or even Championship Points system for the future. This story will unfold…
During the 2025 season, NASCAR relied on a committee of industry members, such as executives, owners, drivers, and track owners, among many others, to discuss potential changes to the playoffs.
While it is unknown whether or not Rice was a part of these meetings, he told Wallace, “I know a lot more than you think,” when it comes to NASCAR’s plans for the 2026 points system.
Of course, Rice did not disclose exactly what he had heard about the new format during this interview; though, he did note that the system is “not exactly what everybody’s posting about.” A potential reference to the rumored 3-3-4 system that hit the rumor mill during the latter half of the season.
Though the debate on what to do has raged for almost a year, the sport has yet to come to a conclusion regarding this difficult decision. One of the major problems NASCAR is facing in finding a new way to crown its champion is finding a system that a majority of fans will like.
Throughout the debate over the format in 2026, the majority of fans fell into three camps:
During his conversation with Wallace, Rice revealed that he falls into the last group, saying, “Do we need an overhaul? No, but we need an adjustment.”
While this may hint that the sport’s stakeholders are leaning towards a correction rather than a reset, Rice says that the sport has listened to feedback and that, regarding NACSAR’s final decision, “75% of the people are gonna love it.”
“We’ve listened as a sport, and it’s going to be great. What I do know is, I feel like 75% of the people are gonna love it. 10% are going to be, ‘Uh, okay.’ And that’s gonna leave 15% of the people who’re gonna hate it.” — Chris Rice
What’s Happening? During Tuesday’s episode of Door Bumper Clear, a NASCAR insider laid out a hypothetical playoff format that now has…
Rice did not stop at addressing the potential new system during this interview, picking up on the “15% of the people that’re gonna hate it” and discussing the growing, extremely vocal portion of the fanbase that supports a return to the full-season points system, which the Cup Series has not used since 2003.
In his opinion, returning to this format would not work due to the interests of the key younger demographic NASCAR is trying to court.
“The traditional way of doing points would be tough to do in this era… Because we are looking towards a younger group of people, right? So that’s what we got to think about.” — Chris Rice
Rice then used watching old races as an example of what makes a full-season system unattractive to a new audience, saying that this style of racing creates blowouts both on-track and in the standings.
“Dude, it might be one car on the lead lap, and somebody’s winning the points series by 487 points,” Rice said.
This particular issue is often raised by playoff supporters, pointing to past times in which a full-season points system mathematically crowned a champion prior to the green flag dropping for the season finale.
In the eyes of Rice, such situations are not “exciting to the young guy or the young woman,” and therefore, to keep the short attention span of these fans locked on the sport, “we’ve got to make it exciting.”
“That ain’t exciting to the young guy or the young woman. So we got to make it exciting. And our attention spans, my social media guy says, ‘Remember, Chris, 30 seconds long, not four hours, 30 seconds.'” — Chris Rice
A common pushback to this perception of full-season points being unattractive to younger fans is the popularity of Formula 1, which does not use a playoff system and often has drivers run away with race wins.
This was brought up by many users online who responded to Rice’s take, including some well-known names such as ElitePrecision29.
As of press time, NASCAR has yet to announce any changes to the playoff system ahead of the 2026 season, though most estimate that any change would likely be announced a few weeks before the season kicks off.
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