NASCAR champion Chase Elliott endorses radical Cup Series overhaul

Hendrick Motorsports star Chase Elliott has called for a major overhaul in the NASCAR Cup Series.

At present, the Cup Series championship is decided via a playoff format that sees 16 drivers compete over four rounds and 10 races, with stars eliminated along the way until a champion is crowned.

Some drivers, such as Denny Hamlin, have called for tweaks to this format, suggesting the addition of a championship round, rather than just a single race to decide the title.

However, Elliott has floated the idea of something far more radical, calling for the playoffs to be scrapped and NASCAR to return to the full-points season format not seen in the Cup Series for decades.

“We’ve had a really good and competitive battle to the regular season [championship] over, correct me if I’m wrong, the last two or three years,” Elliott explained, via The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck.

Chase Elliott suggests Cup Series format change

The Hendrick Motorsports star continued: “It’s really been pretty tight all the way down to Daytona.

“If you just take that as your sample set over the first 26 weeks, it [the full points format] looks pretty solid to me.

“The system would be just fine if you just had a full season. And if somebody runs away with it, so what? Let’s celebrate the fact that somebody ran away with it, that somebody was just that good.

“Motorsports does not have to be like everybody else to be successful. And I’ll stand by that ’til I get done.”

NASCAR confirmed ahead of the 2025 season that they were considering potential tweaks to the playoff format for 2026.

However, Elliott and anybody backing his idea look set to be disappointed, with NASCAR’s President Steve O’Donnell saying back in January, when he was the series’ chief operations officer, that the Cup Series would not be moving away from the playoff format.

NASCAR champion Chase Elliott endorses radical Cup Series overhaul

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