I Am Excited for the 2026 NASCAR Season
Table of Contents
I started writing this in my “creative writing” notebook after watching the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. The field was a crossover grid featuring high-tech prototypes, a diverse cast of grand tourers (GTs), drivers with star power in various series, and gentlemen drivers all looking for a chance at glory. The race in the highest class, GTP, was won by a Porsche 963, and Brazilian driver Felipe Nasr took the race home, marking his third consecutive win in the event. Even though the GTP class was dominated by Porsche and sparingly challenged, the lower GT classes provided entertaining moments, including three-wide passes and a close battle for the win. It was a great opening to the 2026 motorsport season and the primary series for most of my life, NASCAR, only hours away from being active1.
Looking Back
NASCAR is entering its 77th year of operation, and it needs to start off on a high note. Last year ended pretty ugly as Denny Hamlin, a widely hated but now beloved veteran, had his championship chances dashed at the season finale. He was in prime position to win his first championship in his 19th attempt. But a late caution followed by a slow pit stop doomed his chances, and Kyle Larson nabbed his second championship. Now, Larson, on paper, is a worthy champion, and as a Larson fan, I should be happy he won it. But… everyone was not happy. Hell, Larson himself was pitiful of Hamlin being dealt such a cruel hand. Hamlin was already going through a lot with his father’s ailing health, and seeing him finally get the job done would be awesome and heartwarming. But unfortunately, worse was to come with this offseason from hell.
One of the big storylines last season was 23XI Racing, a team co-owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan (yes, that Michael Jordan), and another team suing NASCAR over monopolistic practices. I won’t get too detailed2, but a lot of stuff on NASCAR’s end turned out to really be monopolistic and… kind of cringe. Examples include talking about “sticking a knife” into a smaller series and calling Richard Childress, a team owner and driver since the 1960s, a cuck. Thankfully, everyone used their heads and settled. And while it’s finally over, the dirty laundry stunk a lot…
And then… the tragedies struck:
- Michael Annett, a former junior series regular, passed away
- Greg Biffle and six others, including his wife and two kids, were killed in a plane accident
- The home of Denny Hamlin’s parents had a fire, killing his father and injuring his mother
I distinctly remember reading initial reports of Greg Biffle’s plane crash at work. I couldn’t focus on looking like I was working3 because… this is a driver, a man that I saw race for many years. This is a man who has saved lives in natural disasters. He is a hero… and will be sorely missed.
Moving Forward
So with a shitty ending to the season and an absolutely terrible offseason… the new season is almost upon us and I can’t lie, I’m very eager to see stock cars back on the track. There are a few things in particular that have caught my interest:
The championship format has been overhauled! Since 2014, we have been stuck with an elimination-style bracket. While entertaining at times, the discourse around the end results were insufferable. Drivers with rather superior numbers would have one bad race and get booted from title contention. 2024 in particular was an absolute joke with Joey Logano, having only survived because another competitor had dropped ballast, stole the title with some… “unchampionshiplike” numbers. Now, whether the most wins or having the best average finish across the year yields the “rightful” champion is a separate debate topic altogether, but having a whole 36-race season be forced to come down to one race is… ridiculous. Nearly all NASCAR tracks are unique in their own way, and having just one race be the deciding factor is simply not a good sample size!
So what happened? NASCAR reverted the format to its 2004-13 version: A 10-race showdown amongst 16 drivers, and the driver with the most points wins the title. Not only that, but a race win is worth 55 points instead of 40. I approve both of these changes as a 10-race showdown allows enough time for contenders to naturally build up. Even though there is a real chance that someone can just drive away from the field, it’s not guaranteed. We could have five or so drivers with a chance to win at the finale. We could have a tiebreaker deciding the championship, like in 2011. And 55 points make winning, especially with ample stage points4, matter a hell of a lot more.
The 2026 NASCAR grid has a few changes, but there is a major one: Connor Zilisch. Zilisch is a textbook definition of a wonderkid. Before his NASCAR debut, he won two major American sports car races: the aforementioned Rolex 24 and the 12 Hours of Sebring. He also won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series (the secondary division) race. He scored 11 wins despite multiple injuries in his first full Xfinity season. Now he didn’t win the title (thank you, shitty elimination format!), but it doesn’t really matter as he will drive for Trackhouse Racing in the Cup Series, a midfield team with plenty of skill in its ranks. Zilisch’s strength on the road courses will make him a challenge to his teammate and road course ace Shane van Gisbergen, and with a good grasp on ovals that gets better with experience… we are gonna be talking about him for a long time.
The schedule sees the return of the 1.5-mile Chicagoland Speedway, a track built during the sport’s boom at the turn of the millennium and was removed from the schedule in 2019. It replaces the interesting, but fairly boring, Chicago Street Circuit. I am excited for this track as it had some pretty good racing in its later years. Combine that with how well the current car does at multi-groove speedways… we’re in for a treat.
There is also the return of the famed and historic North Wilkesboro. The 5/8-mile oval appeared in the first season of the NASCAR Cup Series but was left to rot in 1996 in favour of larger and more cosmopolitan facilities. After decades of abandonment, a gradual restoration led to it hosting exhibition events in 2023 and is now getting a points race. Welcome back, Wilkesboro.
Lastly, there is an all-new venue: The Corronado Air Base, a track on, well, a military base! It’s a 3.4-mile layout, and the track is close to San Diego. With nobody having prior experience with this track, it will be fun watching them handle it.
Conclusion
Now I do follow other series: IMSA, WEC, F1, IndyCar, and sporadically Formula E and V8 Supercars. But my NASCAR fandom predates all of them. I’ve followed the sport since 2007 or 2008, well over half my life. There were a lot of good times but also a lot of bad times, especially in recent years. It could be because I am terminally online, but there is a lot of negativity about certain drivers, the officiating who at times are pretty damn incompetent, and how the car sucks and the previous car we all complained about was better after all.
But this year, I have seen people really feel excited about this season. From wanting to move on from this awful offseason, to the new format, to simply seeing many roaring V8s scream on our TVs or right in front of us. All we have left is to wait…
…for Mother Nature to stop screwing with the Clash!
Footnotes
1 The first event, an exhibition event at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has been delayed from its original date on Sunday to… Wednesday.
2 This video gives a good overview
3 The place I worked at was very light on workload… which I hate, but I’ll save that for another day.
4 Stage points are awarded in two or three checkpoints during a race. Some hate it, but I don’t think it’s all bad, as it rewards being at the front throughout the race.