“The most perfect compromise that you could ever ask for,” Mark Martin ecstatically said two weeks ago. This was with regard to a pivotal change that NASCAR implemented for 2026, the championship format upheaval. After 12 seasons of an elimination-style playoff format that set off waves of disillusionment and dissatisfaction among drivers and fans, the sport is taking a new road. However, the immediate impact of this change may be late, as Jeff Burton said recently.

Jeff Burton outlines a new era

“Do I think starting at Daytona, we’re now all going to all of a sudden have the largest viewership ever in the history of the Daytona 500 because this change was made? I don’t think that. No. I think we’re going to have to build our sport a day at a time, an hour at a time, a race at a time. There is no magic pill that we’re going to take that’s going to get us back to the max popularity that we were. This is a step toward what we all hope is the right thing,” Jeff Burton said in an interview with Kenny Wallace.

Starting from 2026, NASCAR will adopt a ‘Chase’ style championship format. It is a ‘compromise’, as Mark Martin said, between the playoffs and the full-season points format. But even with a single top-16 cutoff with a 10-race postseason in place, drivers will not shake off memories of the past format so easily, let alone expect fans to forget the past and boost popularity for the sport.

2025 produced a series of heartbreaks in the sport. Denny Hamlin was dangerously close to clinching a Cup championship after 19 years of competition. Connor Zilisch almost won the Xfinity title after a 10-win season. Neither could get it done due to the playoff format. Then the long string of wrecks in the sport – from Austin Dillon’s wild bump-and-run in the 2024 Richmond race to Carson Hocevar’s aggressive antics – all spelled the desperate situation that the playoffs put drivers in.

So shaking off those habits will be difficult, as per Jeff Burton‘s words. Yet the 21-time Cup Series race winner acknowledged that NASCAR is at least in the right direction now.

“I think this is the latest move to try to draw the sport where it needs to be. And in this case, it’s by looking backwards. It’s by saying, “Hey, we tried to look forward in these ways, and it didn’t work. So, let’s look backwards. Let’s look at what our fans truly expect us to be, make an adjustment. NASCAR had the courage to say, “Okay, we got let’s they had the courage to make changes that they thought ultimately would be good long-term decisions. They now had the courage to say, “We were wrong. Let’s go back.”

While he warned NASCAR of a long-term effort, he also urged fans to help out.

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A plea to give the sport a chance

In terms of popularity, NASCAR has shrunk. In 2025, television viewership for the Cup Series dropped approximately 14.7% year-over-year to an average of 2.45 million viewers, reaching record lows. Fans planning their entire weekends to devote to NASCAR racing are now a rarity. Several factors have led to this situation. These range from a faulty Next-Gen car and an unfair championship format to low horsepower and poor race coverage.

Now, however, NASCAR is on a path to change – and Jeff Burton urged fans to give it a chance. “They really made some decisions they thought were best for you, and they were wrong. Yeah. So they’re righting the ship. They’re righting it,” he said.

“And you can choose to stay mad at it. Like that’s your choice. And if that’s the direction you go, then that’s the direction you go. I don’t think anyone should tell you how you should think or how you should feel or what you should do. I would ask you that you give NASCAR a second chance.”

With a new season just a few weeks away, let’s see what unfolds. Will NASCAR right the ship in 2026, or will it take time?