Mark Martin: “The fans were yelling at me.”
Over a year ago, NASCAR put a committee together to discuss possible changes to the NASCAR championship format. Today, NASCAR finalized a new format ahead of the 2026 season.
Mid-playoff eliminations are gone and playoff points are gone. Instead, 16 drivers will qualify for the 10-race playoff based on points earned in the first 26 races. Winning will offer more points than last season but it won’t lock you into the playoffs.
NASCAR championship format has been revised for 2026
The fans were vocal that they wanted this change. And, many of those wanted the playoffs removed entirely.
Mark Martin sat on the committee and he went to bat for the fans. He argued for a 36-race season, without the playoffs.
We didn’t get that and as he says, ‘Not everyone will be happy.” But, it’s a middle ground between both options.
Mark Martin comments
“The fans were yelling at me, ‘we want full season points.’ So I yelled even louder and almost got thrown out, as Steve said,” Mark Martin stated via the announcement.
“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.”
Mark Martin says it won’t be enough for some
“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,” Martin added.
“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.”
“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.”
Mark Martin knocks the NASCAR playoff format
Steve O’Donnell comments
“We tried to strike a balance,” Steve O’Donnell added.
“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.”
A 36-race championship was on the table
“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,” O’Donnell added.
“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.”
View the full video of the announcement
