MOTORSPORT AMERICA PHOTO
NASCAR Media Conference – Press Conference
Monday, January 12, 2026
An Interview with:
Steve O’Donnell, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Chase Briscoe
THE MODERATOR: Welcome. I’m Adam Alexander. I watch that video, I think
about the fact that the Daytona 500 is just over a month away. When you
think about today’s announcement and all the energy and excitement
that’s going to bring, this is no doubt a historic day for NASCAR.
Before I introduce our panel in today’s announcement, I want to say a
special welcome to all of those watching on YouTube, the NASCAR Channel,
and listening on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Let’s get to the announcement. Steve O’Donnell, take it away and tell us
all about the championship format in 2026.
STEVE O’DONNELL: Thank you, Adam. I appreciate everyone being here as
well.
I do want to take a minute, this is the first time we’ve been in front
of the media and talking to folks, to let everyone know we’re still
thinking about Greg Biffle and his family and all of those involved in
that tragic plane crash.
Also, Denny Hamlin with the loss of his dad. We’re all praying for his
mom with a speedy recovery. Denny was a big part of today’s
announcement, put a lot of work into it. He’s been a big part of the
formats, and we’re thinking about him and really appreciate him as well.
You’ve got a great group here, some of which who were involved in coming
up with this format. Just kind of a quick history of how we got to where
we were. Tim Clark headed up a group that included a number of folks
from the industry. That was drivers, owners, OEMs, television partners,
and a lot of sponsors to talk about what we could do going forward with
our championship format.
There were a couple things that were vitally important, I think, to
everyone in the group. One was that winning still had to matter. We had
to make sure that was a big component of what we were doing. We
certainly wanted consistency to matter. Not lost on us that throughout
what we’ve seen with the current format, there were times when a driver
could win and maybe take a couple races because he had that win in the
bank. That’s not something we wanted. We wanted every race to matter. So
both of those needed to be front and center.
Then we also wanted our fans to know that we’re listening and our
industry to know that we’re listening. With that, where we’ve landed is
candidly the Chase is back. We are going back to a format where the Cup
side, the first 26 races will be based on points system, and the final
10 races will make up the Chase.
If you go into the Chase format, first and foremost, you want to look at
how the points will be set. So the points leader will go into the Chase
at 2,100 points. It was important for us to have a bonus for that
leader. So they’ll have a 25-point lead over second place and a 35-point
lead over third place. Then the positions beyond that will go down by 5
points.
What also is really important for the group that got together is
winning. I talked about that. We’re going to take winning from 40 points
up to 55 points. I believe that will be a great incentive for the
drivers each and every race to have to go out there and perform but also
go for wins.
While I have a minute too, I want to take a moment to thank Mark for
coming from his vacation. I know it’s a long, long trip from out west.
Mark Martin was the first guy in the room to stand up and say I want to
go back to full season points. There were a lot of folks who wanted to
throw Mark out of the room initially, but what Mark did was got us to a
position where what’s the right balance? And the balance between those
who like the playoff and those who like the full season points.
We believe we’ve struck that balance. We’ve got the best of both worlds
where every race matters. We’ve talked to a lot of folks in the
industry. We’ve run a lot of different models and believe this is the
best place to land really to get back to who we are. That’s the core of
NASCAR and want to launch this, and we’re really excited about the 2026
season.
THE MODERATOR: Steve O’Donnell giving us the details of what’s going to
happen with our championship format in 2026. He referenced Hall of Famer
Mark Martin, and we’re glad that Mark is here and a part of our panel.
The rest of our panel, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Hall of Famer, owner JR
Motorsports. On the back row, active drivers: Chase Briscoe is here from
Joe Gibbs Racing, driving that 19 Toyota. Ryan Blaney is here from Team
Penske, driver of the No. 12. And Chase Elliott, driver of the No. 9
from Hendrick Motorsports. It seems appropriate to have two guys on the
panel named Chase, I believe.
I want to go around and get the reaction from all of you on today’s
announcement and the format that will unfold in 2026.
Dale, we’ll start with you.
DALE EARNHARDT JR: I think there’s a lot to say. I was really excited to
hear the news that we were getting a little closer to a full 36-race
format. This is as close in my opinion that you can get without going
all the way.
What I believe it does is it makes it simpler for our fans to follow.
I’m a fan of the sport, and now I’m compelled to plug in every single
week because I know there’s a long form objective for my driver to
accomplish to be able to give himself the opportunity to win the
championship.
So even though my driver may have success early on in the season, it
does not assure him success in the postseason. So with the way that
they’re going to stack the bonus points and everything else, it’s
critical that these drivers have success every single week. Every single
race, every single lap will have more importance. I think it’s fun for
the drivers to have a more clear objective for how to get to the
championship and easier for our fans to follow.
THE MODERATOR: Mark, your thoughts?
MARK MARTIN: The fans were yelling at me we want full season points. So
I yelled even louder and almost got thrown out, as Steve said.
I think that this is the most perfect compromise that you could ever ask
for. It’s going to require our 2026 champion to be lightning fast and
incredibly consistent, and that’s what we can all get behind.
So I’m really excited. I think it’s fantastic. I would just appeal to
the race fans, all the race fans, but especially the classic fans who
say to me, I don’t watch anymore. I say we need you. Come on back. We’re
headed in the right direction. Come back and join with us, and we’ll
keep making progress.
One more thing. For the broadcasters, for the media, the journalists and
everyone, this is a time for a change, a change in how we cover the
sport, and that means, instead of every week talking about the cutoff
line, the playoff, who’s in, who’s out, all these things, we need to
focus even more on our heroes.
These guys behind me that are winning these races are our Pearsons and
our Yarboroughs and our Buddy Bakers of today, and we need our fans to
connect with these guys. We need them to connect with the crew chiefs.
We need to connect with the engineers as well. Give the fans something
that they can connect to and help us bill these superstars like they
deserve to be.
THE MODERATOR: Chase Elliott, lead us off from the back row.
CHASE ELLIOTT: It gets harder as you go along to add to this. I think,
look, this is — a couple things come to my mind, first and foremost, to
Steve’s point, willing to listen, right? Not only to Mark and Dale and
even guys like myself and Ryan, who I think have kind of screamed at
some of these things over the course of time of just wanting it to be
better. I think we all want it to be better because, to Dale’s point, we
are fans of this sport.
I grew up a fan. I watched that video. A lot of those years of Jimmie
dominating and the championship of Tony and Carl all during the Chase
were incredible runs. I think we oftentimes forget how good we had it
through all those years of Chase format. I think it is a really nice
compromise. I think getting a full season was going to be a pretty big
challenge, and I’m not sure there’s really a better place to land than a
true 10-race Chase, really similar to what we had through those years of
the epic battles that we saw.
I personally appreciate Steve and the folks at NASCAR for being able to
come together with our TV partners and making everyone happy. That’s a
really hard thing to do, and I think sometimes we all forget about that
and just how many pieces make this puzzle.
Really proud to be here. I can say that with complete honesty. This is
something that I’m proud of as a competitor, something I’m looking
forward to competing in and against these guys with, and I think, just
from my perspective, challenge the race fans this year, let’s enjoy what
we got. We’re so quick to complain about everything, everything that we
have and everything that we do. Let’s enjoy what we have because we’re
making history whether you like it or not.
Celebrate the champion. Celebrate the guys who went out there and did a
good job. I think this format promotes that. Let’s enjoy what we have.
We’ve got a pretty cool thing at the end of the day. Let’s not forget
about it, and enjoy what we got today.
THE MODERATOR: Ryan?
RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, just to echo what all these guys said in front of me
and before me, I am very excited for it. I grew up — I think probably
all three of us sitting up here are at the age where we all grew up, the
Chase was in place, and this is what we watched as kids. I loved seeing
it, and I loved seeing close battles.
I feel like it also is going to — I sit back, and I look at this new
format, and sometimes we all get grief about over aggressiveness and
things like that, and sometimes you get put in these situations where
it’s a win and move on type scenario. I think it’s going to clean up a
lot of the racing side of it and get back to the purity side of it to
where it is a little bit more of not brash, a little bit more of the
beautiful art form that I grew up loving.
I am a huge fan of it, like Chase said and all these guys said. I
appreciate NASCAR for listening. I appreciate all these guys, Mark and
Dale, for being big voices for us. It’s just fun to be a part of it. I
look forward to next year, and consistency is going to be a massive part
of it.
It’s not going to be — I don’t think you’re going to get guys who get
out and say good points day. It’s still going to be winning is a huge
product of it because of the increase in the winner’s points. Yeah, I’m
excited. I hope everyone is as excited as we all are to be a part of it
and for them to watch it on TV.
THE MODERATOR: If the art form of this Chase format models your
mustache, we’re in for a real treat.
Chase Briscoe, your thoughts?
CHASE BRISCOE: I like the name. It’s a great name. I’m excited. Like
these guys said, I don’t know what else I can add. It just has every
characteristic you want in a championship format where winning matters,
consistency matters, DNFs are going to matter.
Just the points swing now with winning, you’re not going to have that
win and in, but with the 15 extra bonus points, winning can take a guy
from fourth in the championship all the way to having the lead and vice
versa.
I think it just adds so many new elements, and it’s honestly a great
format. Like Ryan was saying, I grew up with the Chase format and loved
it. I think this makes it even better. Yeah, just looking forward to
finally being a competitor in it and looking forward to seeing what we
have.
Q. Steve, what was the process like from the very start of the
conversations with all the people, the committee and everybody, to start
the ideas of what we should do to kind of change the format to first
week, second week, like through that? What was the processes like for
getting everyone to have a good compromise, and how much influence did,
say, drivers, team owners, and fans outside of this main committee, how
much did you all look at things like that?
STEVE O’DONNELL: That’s a really good question. Over a year, probably a
year and a half process, if I’m totally honest with everyone, which
that’s my nature, going into even Phoenix this year, it was kind of a
hold your breath moment. We recognize more and more that someone winning
a Championship, absolutely, they win it by the rules, but was it the
best format that we could go with?
The tide had turned in the garage area, and that’s important to us and
certainly important to our race fans. We did a lot of listening. We did
a lot of talking and looked at a ton of ideas, modeled a lot of
different things. But I applaud the industry, and that includes the
media as well.
You’ll hear me often say, when I say NASCAR, I’m not just talking about
the folks who are making the rules at the R&D center. NASCAR is everyone
here. It’s everyone here. It’s the team owners, the OEMs, and all those
people had a voice in this.
We tried to strike a balance. Not everyone’s going to love it. We don’t
expect everyone to just go out and love it. We don’t expect this to be
the magic wand we wave from a NASCAR standpoint and say everything’s now
great. We’ve got a lot of work to do from our standpoint with the
relationships in the garage, getting back to those, but getting back to
who we are. That’s hard-core racing and the Chase and people having fun.
We work in a pretty damn good industry, and we need to have some fun,
celebrate the wins.
It was a great process. We looked at everything, beat up a ton of
models, and I’m proud of where we landed as a group.
Q. Also for Steve and I guess anybody on the panel. You guys have talked
about the compromise to get to this point. What is the desired end game
overall? You said not everybody’s going to agree with it, not
everybody’s going to love it, but what are you trying to most maximize
out of this Playoff format or going back to the Chase?
STEVE O’DONNELL: I think from my perspective, and I’d be interested to
hear it from the other guys, is re-engage with our core fans. The folks
who got us there are a loud voice.
I think, when the industry is talking about they want a different
format, we want that as well. We want the drivers to feel like —
they’re the best drivers in the world, and we want them to feel great
that, when they win a championship, that they ran through a gauntlet of
the toughest race tracks, 36 weekends, and they pulled it off.
At the end of the day, it’s growing the fan base, but it’s not just
chasing new fans. We need to be with the folks who brought us to the
dance, make sure they believe in us, where we’re going. New fans will
come along because they’re going to see that this is a cool sport to be
around.
Q. For any of our active drivers, with wins counting for more points
now, how does that help counter what we used to hear of just having good
points days, still incentivizing winning while also rewarding
consistency now?
CHASE ELLIOTT: I think from my perspective winning mattered in the
previous format that we had as well, but you could also have good points
days too. I don’t think that it’s totally gone. I don’t think either
side of the fence is gone, and to me I think that’s kind of the whole
point of this.
You can go out there and have a great stretch of top 5s and top 10s and
get stage points and all of those things. You can still have good points
days. I don’t think that’s erased. But certainly the amount of points
that you’re going to get for winning is eventually going to add up.
Look, I’ve always kind of been a believer that I think a lot of the
formats and things, a lot of times it’s going to come out in the wash.
To me, that was where as long as we had an opportunity for a format to
make it come out in the wash, I think we were doing the right thing. To
me this format does that.
Having bigger sample sets, as we’ve heard, not coming down to one race
— there’s just a lot of variables in motorsports. I think, as long as
you give these drivers and teams and just the races play out and let it
come out eventually the way that it should, I think we’re doing right,
and I think this is a great step to achieving that.
Q. Dale, obviously you won’t be in the booth for these races, but from
your broadcasting perspective, what does this do for the overall
storylines as opposed to four drivers or eight drivers or 12 drivers at
any given part of the rounds?
DALE EARNHARDT JR: Well, I think that for us, we’ll be in a pretty
unique part of the season throughout the summer as we’re building toward
the Playoffs or the Chase, and we’ll be sort of trying to understand who
is trying to fight their way into that position to be one of those 16
drivers.
I recall 20 years ago how cool it was to be able to stand on that stage
at Richmond after that final race of the regular season and be one of
the guys, right, that had worked all year, every lap, every race, put a
good points record together one week and win the next and drag a torn-up
race car across the line for 20th to get that stage every single week
and grind and grind.
That’s kind of what I’m excited about for these guys to experience, is
the pride and the work that they’ve got to put in every single lap and
every single race to finally be one of those few people who actually
gets to be a part of that at the end of the year.
So that will be fun for our portion of the season. I love the idea that,
once we do get to the Chase, we just get to sit back and watch these
guys go at it for 10 races, and they have to put together the full body
of work. I feel like whoever can accomplish that can feel pretty darn
good about what they’ve done at the end of the day.
Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Like I said at the first of this, it’s
simpler, easier, I think that’s great. We all understand what the
objective is, pretty cut and dried. It’s the full body of work. It’s the
entire season.
You can be hot at the end of the year and still have success and do well
and have a shot at the championship, but what you do in the regular
season of the first 26 races is going to be critical to giving you that
chance.
Q. This one’s for Mark. You seem to really have your finger on the pulse
of the fan, the classic race fan. So do you think this format is enough?
Because some classic race fans, of course, just want a straight race,
just like it used to be in the ’80s or whatever. What would you say to
that?
MARK MARTIN: Yeah, it’s not going to be enough for some. You just can’t
make everyone happy. I think that it is the best possible scenario that
you could have asked for.
After the second meeting that we had, I was still convinced that we
couldn’t even get to this. I am so happy. Everyone wins with this
format, everyone. The fans win. They were heard. They win. The drivers,
the teams win. NASCAR wins. Everybody wins. You know, you can’t always
have everything you want.
I wanted it all, but I’m sure happy. This is great for our sport.
Q. Steve, 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?
STEVE O’DONNELL: I think I’d go back to we looked at everything. I think
the leader probably to begin with was maybe a longer four-race
championship format that I think some people thought about, then it was
five, what would the different mix of tracks be. Then really it narrowed
down to a full season or some type of a Chase.
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 liked 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 an
elevator, get to the 20th floor, and be able to explain this to
somebody, and we could finally do that. We couldn’t do that in the past.
It was really challenging.
So this we feel like, as Mark said, is the best of both worlds. It gives
us room to take a look at it. It won’t be perfect. We’ll learn some
things along the way. We’ve got the smartest group of engineers and
drivers and teams who will look at this and say, Here we go, this is the
way I am going go after it. And we’ll learn some things along the way as
well.
Q. Steve, what went into settling on 16 as the right number to qualify
for the Chase? Then also, what was the balance of the points for winning
versus a win-and-in scenario? I look back at maybe last season where a
guy like Shane van Gisbergen, what he did in the regular season versus
being able to get in this format?
STEVE O’DONNELL: Let me answer the first part in terms of the win and
in. One of the challenges around there, we’re going to the Daytona 500,
biggest race of the year. Mark Martin wins the Daytona 500, and what’s
the first thing the announcer is going to say? He’s in the Playoffs.
What are we doing?
When you look at that, it doesn’t happen in any other sport, and it
really became something that was taking away from the entirety of the
season. So it was important to us to still have winning matter but every
race matter.
Even when you got to the old Playoffs, you could win in the first round,
and you could test for two races if you wanted to. The sponsors probably
wouldn’t allow that, and you’re going after it, but there were some
unique situations we learned along the way that allowed for some things
that we didn’t love.
This was important for us to have winning still matter, adjust the
points, and make it as simple as possible going in.
I forgot the first part.
Q. Settling on 16.
STEVE O’DONNELL: 16, yeah. Not lost on us that a lot of things were
going on in Phoenix and throughout the year, and we wanted to make sure
that we limited the disruption as much as possible in the industry to
make this happen.
16, when you look at it in totality, it still felt like it was a fair
number, and if we could keep it the same, we felt like that would be
important.
We recognize there will have to be some tweaks with drivers and owners
and how those things were structured in the past, but we wanted to keep
the number the same if at all possible.
Q. Steve, there’s going to be people on both sides that still won’t be
satisfied with this, particularly the people that were on the 36 race
side that were really hoping for that. How do you do outreach, or how do
you get them back in the fold so to speak and embrace them even though
this decision didn’t turn out quite the way they wanted maybe?
STEVE O’DONNELL: Again, I’d go back to we think it’s a good compromise.
At the end of the day, it’s going to be all about are we putting on
great races that’s people want to tune in and go and see? Do they care
about our drivers? Are we promoting the heroes that they are, as Mark
and Dale said?
We were talking in the past about, if you go to Bristol, Ryan Blaney
wins the race. Chase Briscoe – I’m making it up here – finishes 18th but
makes the cutoff. The story was all about the 18th-place finisher
instead of the winner. Long term that wasn’t good for us.
We wanted to build heroes. It’s hard to win these races. It’s hard to be
in the top 10. Really important for us to get back to these storylines.
We think the fans will come with us.
We’ve got work to do on this. It’s not lost on any one of us at NASCAR.
We have talented people who are hungry to get back to where we were.
We’re going to work our asses off for the industry to deliver to our
race fans.
MARK MARTIN: I’d like to add a couple of things to Jeff. Steve won’t say
it, but there are contracts, team contracts with sponsors. It’s a lot
more complicated than our fans really realize. It’s very complicated.
We’re really lucky to have gotten what we’ve got here. This is a great
compromise, in my eyes. And the jump from 10 to 36 is not nearly as
unlikely as from Playoffs to 36. So you never know what happens in the
future. He didn’t say that. I did, though.
THE MODERATOR: That’s a good place to end it. That wraps this portion of
our announcement. We thank our panel here today. We thank those gathered
in the room. We also want to say a special thanks to those watching on
the YouTube channel and the NASCAR Channel and listening on SiriusXM
NASCAR Radio.