Kyle Busch isn’t convinced NASCAR has made the right call in bringing back the Chase format. And the veteran let everyone know as much in a recent media appearance where he started digging into why the sport ditched the system in the first place.
Talking on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Busch expressed skepticism about the logic behind bringing a 10-race, points-based championship format back. He thinks that by bringing it back, they are basically ignoring the problems that the format had in the first place, especially for drivers who suffered a single costly incident.
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“I thought we got away from it for a reason in the past, so I’m not real sure why we went back to it. The reason why we sort of went away from it was obviously Jimmy Johnson’s dominance number one. But I feel like number two is, there were times where guys like myself who would have one bad race or two that would then knock them out of the championship.”
The 40-year-old driver used his own personal experience as an example of just how unforgiving the old chase format could be. Getting knocked out by a wreck early in that 10-race stretch and that points deficit would be almost impossible to come back from, even if you ran strong afterwards. “You get caught up in a wreck and boom,” Busch added. “You can’t make up enough points to get back to the championship, but you’re going to finish third in points.”
Kyle Busch worries Chase format still punishes drivers for one bad race
Matthew O’Haren-Imagn Images
Under NASCAR’s newly updated 2026 Chase format, race wins will be worth even more to drivers, theoretically giving drivers a better chance to recover from setbacks. But in reality Busch believes that’s gonna mainly benefit the powerhouse teams like Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs and Team Penske. Teams that can pretty much win week in and week out.
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For the rest of the drivers, it’s business as usual. You still have to drive perfectly and the margin for error remains slim.
The RCR driver also pointed out that the way teams will have to approach strategy has changed. Getting stage points during the regular season is going to be critical, and qualifying position could end up being a big factor and could dictate how well you hold onto position on the track and avoid getting caught up in trouble on the track.
Later on in the interview, Kyle Busch suggested that the way racing is done these days in NASCAR, with its very aggressive restarts and all too frequent incidents, might just introduce a whole new layer of complexity to the Chase. “With the racing the way that it is today and everybody running over everybody all the time. You might see all 16 of us have a bad race. So you know if all of us have a bad race and that could just sort of be construed as your throwaway and you got to be good in the other nine,” he said.
The two-time Cup champion made these comments after a difficult 2025 season where he had two DNFs, didn’t manage to win a race and only scored three top-five finishes out of 36 starts. He ended up 21st in the final drivers’ standings, though if the Chase format had been in place, he’d have finished 19th. In that and it would have been Kyle Larson taking the title.
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