NASCAR Mexico will use Chase format starting in 2026

NASCAR México will also adopt the Chase format, doing away with the playoffs featuring elimination rounds starting in the 2026 season, confirming it will follow the change implemented by NASCAR USA for this same season.

The 2026 regulations establish that the last four events on the calendar will determine the champion through point accumulation, dispensing with the cuts between races that characterized the 2024 and 2025 seasons.

The previous system divided the last three races into rounds where drivers were progressively eliminated, reducing the initial 10 qualifiers to seven after race 10, then to four after race 11, so that those four finalists would contend for the title in race 12.

Photo By Carlos Castillo

That format completely disappears from the 2026 regulations, replaced by a Chase where the 10 qualified drivers will compete in the final four races without facing intermediate eliminations. The championship will be decided by points accumulated in those four Chase races, added to the playoff points (reset points) each driver receives based on their position at the end of the regular season.

The leader will start with 2,015 points, the second with 2,012, and the remaining positions with uniform three-point differences down to the tenth place which will begin with 2,000 points, creating an advantage proportional to performance in the first eight races of the year.

Qualification solely by points without automatic entry via wins

The most radical change of the new format eliminates the automatic entry via wins that existed in the previous system, where any regular season victory guaranteed a spot among the 10 finalists regardless of championship position.

Now only the top 10 in points accumulated during the first eight regular season races will qualify, which completely reverses the logic of the 2024 format and opens the possibility that a driver could win multiple races but be excluded from the Chase if their overall performance isn't enough to place them among the top 10.

Wins obtained during the regular season will retain value as a tiebreaker criterion to order the qualifiers before assigning the playoff points (reset points), but they lose their function as a direct pass to the final phase. A driver with three wins but ranked 11th in the championship will be left out of the Chase, a situation impossible under the previous format where a single win guaranteed qualification.

Winning a race will award up to 47 points

NASCAR México modified the scoring system to substantially increase the value of each victory, seeking to compensate for the elimination of automatic qualification.

The winner will receive 43 base points for position plus three additional points for the victory, adding one point for leading at least one lap and another point for leading the most laps, which will allow accumulating up to 47 points in a single race compared to the exact 43 points the winner received under the 2024 format without additional bonuses.

The potential increase of seven points equals a 16% rise in the value of winning, a substantial modification that seeks to maintain the incentive for victory even without the guarantee of playoff qualification.

The stages will retain the distribution of three points to the segment winner, two to second, and one to third, accumulating in the race total for both the regular season and during the Chase, eliminating the reduction to 2-1-0.5 that the 2024 format applied during the playoffs.

Photo By Carlos Castillo

No eliminations during the four Chase races

The 2026 Chase will eliminate the progressive cuts that characterized the previous format, allowing the 10 qualifiers to compete in the final four races without facing intermediate eliminations.

Drivers will accumulate points in each race up to the finale, where the one with the most total points will be champion, in direct opposition to the previous format that eliminated three drivers after race 10 and another three after race 11, concentrating the championship on four finalists for the last race.

That system of progressive cuts meant that a bad result in either of the two elimination races ended championship hopes regardless of accumulated season performance, reducing 11 race dates to surviving two elimination rounds.

The new format eliminates that risk by allowing a driver with trouble in one of the four Chase races to recover in the remaining three, defining the championship through accumulated performance in multiple events instead of simply rewarding survival through cutoff rounds.

The playoff points (reset points) will follow a uniform progression replacing the irregular scale of the previous format, where differences between positions varied asymmetrically (1010-1009-1008-1007-1006-1004-1003-1002-1001-1000). The new scale establishes that first place will start with 2,015 points and each subsequent position will subtract exactly three points down to 2,000 for tenth, creating a symmetrical structure that will make the advantage granted by each regular season position more predictable.

Photo By Carlos Castillo

NASCAR USA implemented the change first for 2026

The format replicates the system that NASCAR's three national series adopted for their 2026 season, announced in December 2025 as a replacement for the Championship 4 format in effect since 2014.

That system received recurring criticism for over a decade because it reduced 35 race dates to a single result, allowing a dominant driver to lose the championship due to a bad result in the final race and allowing drivers with inferior performance during the season to win the title with a good performance in the deciding event.

NASCAR USA explained that the change rewards consistency across multiple races instead of concentrating everything on one final event, implementing a 10-race Chase for the Cup Series, nine for the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series, and seven for Trucks, which will make NASCAR México the category with the shortest Chase in the NASCAR system with just four dates.

Monterrey will start the Chase on September 4th

The regular season will end on August 15th and 16th in San Luis Potosí with race 8, defining the 10 qualifiers and their positions for the playoff points (reset points).

The Chase will begin on September 4th and 5th in Monterrey with race 9, starting a sequence of four races that will culminate on November 14th and 15th in Puebla with the championship decided by accumulated points.

The intermediate Chase dates will include Aguascalientes on September 26th and 27th and a race on October 17th and 18th whose venue remains unconfirmed between Mérida or Querétaro, one of the multiple locations pending definition in the 2026 calendar that NASCAR México published with three dates completely unconfirmed and two more with unresolved dual options.