Trying to explain the NASCAR points system
The NASCAR points system. I think you may need a degree in aerospace engineering to stand a chance of fully understanding how it works, but hopefully this article will help you slightly, or just confuse you a whole heap more!
The NASCAR season is split up into two separate championships. The first 26 rounds are a part of the regular season, with the final 10 races forming the playoffs. For now, we are going to focus on the regular season.
The Regular Season
The whole aim of the regular season is to qualify for the NASCAR playoffs. Qualifying for the playoffs can be achieved in two ways:
1. Finishing in the top 16 in the regular season championship
2. Winning a race in the first 26 rounds of the season
That means winning a race in the first 26 rounds is crucial, as you automatically secure yourself into the top 16. If you don’t achieve a win, you run the risk of getting pushed out by somebody who isn’t in the top 16 but wins a race. A prime example of this is Bubba Wallace. He finished the regular season P12 in the points, but a race winner such as Harrison Burton, who finished the regular season in 34th, knocked him out. As a result, Wallace didn’t reach the playoffs, alongside former playoff champion Kyle Busch.
So, how do the points work.
The winner at the end of the race receives 40 points, 2nd place 35 and third place 34. This continues in increments of 1 all the way down to 36th onwards who all receive one point. Unfortunately, that isn’t where it ends.
NASCAR races are split into 3 stages. Each stage gets longer, with the final stage being the most important as that’s where the race winner is declared. However, if you finish in the top 10 in either of the stages, you earn points. First place gets 10 points, with 1 point for finishing down in 10th. That means if you won the first two stages and the final stage for the race win, you would receive 60 points towards your championship tally.
Hopefully that should make a tiny bit of sense. So now its time to complicate it a bit more.
As well as the points table in the regular season, there is also another championship table. The playoff points.
A playoff point is what every driver is chasing. This will help you in the playoffs later in the season and it is vital to your success. The points are awarded to those who win a stage and the overall race. For winning either stage 1 or 2 you receive 1 playoff point, with the overall race winner receiving 5 points. That means the race winner who scored 60 points from earlier, would also receive 7 playoff points for winning each stage of the race.
Now that we’ve established that during the regular season there’s two championships, the regular points and the playoff points, what on earth does that all mean?
After the regular season is complete, the regular points and the playoff points tables are combined.
Tyler Reddick won the regular season championship by 1 point over Kyle Larson, meaning he received 15 playoff points, with Larson receiving 10. This continues all the way down to 10th place, who receives 1 playoff point. This highlights how crucial the regular season is as you can gain or lose a handful of playoff points based on the final table.
However, even though he won the regular season, Reddick entered the playoffs in 3rd place, 12 playoff points behind the leader Larson. This is because throughout the season, Larson won 2 more races than Reddick, as well as a handful more stage wins. As a result, when the two tables combined, he ended up ahead of Reddick. This is shown below:
Regular Season Final Standings: Playoffs Points Standings:
1. Reddick / 860 points 1. Larson / 30 points
2. Larson / - 1 2. Bell / - 5
3. Elliott / - 29 3. Byron / - 14
4. Bell / - 77 4. Reddick / - 17
5. Byron / - 100 5. Blaney / - 17
So when these two tables combine, it results in the top 5 going into the playoffs looking like this:
1. Larson / 40 points
2. Bell / -8
3. Reddick / -12
4. Byron / -18
5. Blaney / -22
Yes, I know, unnecessarily confusing, but these two tables combined form the playoff standings, meaning there is a complete reset before the final 10 races. Leading us to…
The Playoffs
The playoff season comprises of 10 races in a knockout format. There is a Round of 16, 12 and 8, with each round featuring 3 races, where at the end of the third race, the 4 drivers with the lowest points are knocked out. The final 4 is a one race shootout, with whoever finishes highest being declared champion.
Points are awarded in the exact same manner, with 1 point awarded for the stage winners and 5 for the overall race winner. Like in the regular season, if you win a race you are automatically qualified for the next round.
For example, Joey Logano won the first race of the playoffs in the Round of 16 and so jumped from 9th to first in the table and was secured into the Round of 12. When the Round of 12 started, there is a reset and his win is irrelevant, meaning his playoff points are what count, dropping him back to 8th in the table (the same reset happens before the Round of 8 as well).
The whole aim of the playoffs is to stay above the cut line. In the Round of 16, a cut line is placed under the driver in 12th in the table, which would be Alex Bowman in 2024. Every driver below him has their points displayed as negative to Bowman’s total. For example, Harrison Burton in 14th, one playoff point behind Bowman would be -1. Larson in first would be +35. So each drivers aim is to make sure they are in the positive points before the end of each three race round. When the Round of 12 begins, the cut line is moved to the driver in 8th place, so although you may have been positive in the round of 16, you can start the round of 8 in the negative points.
Not so simple I know.
It should also be said, even though drivers are eliminated from the playoffs before or during, they still complete each race, with a race win still important to them, often having an impact on the final playoff results.
The playoff format has its positives and negatives. It can create some exciting and dramatic races with the cut line becoming extremely tight with only a few points deciding who makes the next round and who doesn’t. It can, however, lead to some potentially ‘unfair’ results.
In 2024, Joey Logano was crowned champion by being ruthless in the playoffs. Winning races in the round of 16 and 8, whilst also finishing the highest in the championship race, beating fast-charging teammate Blaney. However, he finished the regular season down in 15th in the points, some 245 points behind regular season champion Reddick, with an average finishing position of 17th. He also arguably shouldn’t have been in the Round of 8 at all. Alex Bowman who qualified in 8th place was later disqualified for a technical infringement, meaning Logano who was in 9th, was the beneficiary.
Kyle Larson, notably the quickest driver all season, didn’t benefit from this format. A run of poor form saw him knocked out in the round of 8, with the same fate falling Christopher Bell, who had one poor race and missed out on the final 4 by 4 points (by a controversial decision, which is a story for another day).
So, although it produces an exciting format, with lots on the line, it doesn’t necessarily reward those who have been consistent throughout the entire season, unlike in Formula One and Indycar, where consistency is the name of the game.
It also, as you’ve probably worked out, is a tricky format to initially grasp. I thought I understood it well before writing this article, but I had to have two goes at writing this as I manage to confuse myself first time round!
I would encourage anyone to watch the NASCAR series. Although I’ve probably made it sound overly complicated, watching a race and seeing it act out live will explain it better than I ever could.
For the proper rules and regs on the NASCAR points system, the link below will take you to the official NASCAR website where they briefly explain the points system:
https://www.nascar.com/news-media/2019/02/08/nascar-driver-points-awarded-per-race/