Nascar has announced that the stock car racing series will consider making changes to its playoff format for the 2026 season.
Confirmed:
- Nascar to keep existing playoff format for 2025
- Sanctioning body will seek opinions from drivers, teams, manufacturers, media and officials on whether changes need to be made
Context:
Nascar’s current playoff format has been in place since 2014 and sees 16 drivers qualify for the ten-race postseason, which sees the field cut to 12, to eight, and then the championship four.
The last significant change to the format came in 2017 with the introduction of stage racing and playoff points.
Nascar president Steve Phelps said in November the organisation would look to see if there are opportunities to “tweak something” with the playoff format.
However, the series said no definitive change has been suggested and alterations for the 2026 season are not guaranteed.
In other news, Joe Gibbs Racing and Saia have announced a multi-year partnership that will see the transport company serve as the primary sponsor of Ty Gibbs’ number 54 for seven races during the 2025 Nascar Cup Series.
Comment:
“I don’t think we want to get in the habit of making small little tweaks every season to the playoffs,” said John Probst, Nascar’s executive vice president and chief racing development officer.
“Where we landed was for 2025 not making any changes to the playoffs. Throughout the course of this year, we will get a working group together with some media folks, OEMs, Goodyear, drivers.
“We probably talked to most of the folks one-on-one about, where are we at? What are we thinking?
“Basically, we look at that as a workstream for a group of our stakeholders this year, to look at it holistically.”
Coming next:
The 2025 Nascar campaign is set to begin with the exhibition Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium on 2nd February.
Go deeper:
- Nascar launches first FAST channel in partnership with Tubi
- Nascar fuels up with multi-year Suburban Propane partnership
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