Saturday at Kansas Speedway was a washout. Rain and thunderstorms halted Kansas practice after four drivers completed laps, then washed out qualifying. NASCAR pulled its performance metric and set Sunday’s Cup Series starting grid from a formula rather than a stopwatch. The same thing happened at Darlington and again at Bristol. Three of the first four races in the 2026 Chase playoffs have gone the same way.

Each time, the lineup that formula produced has raised the same question about how the championship is supposed to work. To understand why that question keeps surfacing, you have to start with how the formula itself operates.

How the NASCAR metric sets the grid

NASCAR introduced the performance metric in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when qualifying was frequently unavailable. The original version had three components: 50% from the previous race finishing position, 35% from owner-points standing, and 15% from fastest lap. NASCAR later updated the weighting. The original three-part version spread the previous-race influence across multiple inputs, including fastest lap.

By removing that element and concentrating 70% on a single finishing position, the current formula became more sensitive to any one bad race. It is inherently more punishing than the original version was. The current formula has two inputs. Seventy percent comes from the driver’s finish in the immediately preceding race. Thirty percent comes from the team’s current owner-points position. Lower score means a better starting spot.

Under normal conditions, this formula sets the order in which teams line up to attempt qualifying. Actual lap times then determine the grid. When qualifying is completely canceled, the formula skips that step and becomes the starting lineup directly.

Four drivers completed practice laps before the session was canceled. No qualifying laps were completed. The metric was the only information NASCAR had.

Here is what it produced. Joey Logano won at Bristol Motor Speedway the week before. His score: 1 multiplied by 0.70, plus 3 multiplied by 0.30, equals 1.6. Front row. Kyle Larson finished second at Bristol, giving him a 1.7 and the second starting position. Carson Hocevar was third at Bristol, scoring 4.5. He starts fourth.

Ryan Blaney finished 33rd at Bristol. His score: 33 multiplied by 0.70, plus 6 multiplied by 0.30. Total: 24.9. Starting position: 25th.

Blaney’s Bristol result alone generated 23.1 of those 24.9 points. His sixth-place championship position contributed just 1.8. The formula is working exactly as designed. That is where the complication begins. The reason Blaney’s result read 33rd is a specific sequence of events on one particular lap.

The lap that followed Blaney to Kansas

Blaney spent most of the Bristol night at the front. He led 202 laps, the most of any driver in the field. He won Stage 2. After a commitment-line penalty set him back, he worked his way into second place. On Lap 457, he passed Hocevar for position.

On Lap 458, there was contact. Blaney’s No. 12 went into the outside wall and could not continue. Official result: 33rd place.

Both drivers were measured in their post-race assessments. On Denny Hamlin’s podcast, Blaney described it as essentially 50-50. Two drivers wanted the same piece of track and neither was willing to give ground. Hocevar said he understood why Blaney was frustrated and acknowledged the incident could be viewed as his fault or Blaney’s.

Whatever reading you apply to the contact, the classification gave Hocevar third and Blaney 33rd. The metric processes only the final position. It does not account for laps led. It makes no distinction between a crash-related 33rd and a 33rd from running at the back all night. The formula sees the number.

Blaney’s total Bristol points were 19: 5 from Stage 1, 10 from Stage 2, and 4 from the 33rd-place finishing position. His performance across most of the race and his final result tell two entirely different stories. The metric carries only the result into the following week.

Hocevar left Bristol with 41 points and starts fourth at Kansas Speedway. Blaney left with 19 and starts 25th. Hocevar started fourth and Blaney 25th, a 21-position difference in starting positions, not a 20-position gap if measuring ordinal positions.

Why that gap carries more weight in 2026 than in previous playoff formats comes down to how the championship was designed.

Why the 2026 NASCAR Chase structure magnifies this

NASCAR built its 2026 postseason around a specific philosophy. Sixteen Chase drivers, 10 races, no eliminations, and no round-by-round resets. The driver with the most total points after all 10 races wins. It was designed to reward sustained consistency, removing the elimination rounds and single-week lifelines of previous postseason formats.

That design creates a tension with the performance metric. The championship says evaluate these 16 drivers across 10 races. The metric places 70% of the next race’s starting-position calculation on a single previous result. Those two ideas coexist under ordinary circumstances. They come into conflict when a crash or mechanical failure converts a dominant performance into a 33rd-place finish.

Stage points make that conflict more concrete. Kansas runs three stages, ending at Laps 80, 165, and 267. Stage winners collect 10 points each, with points distributed through 10th place. A race win pays 55. Second place pays 35. None of these numbers reset between rounds. They sit permanently in the cumulative total for all 10 Chase races.

A driver starting second can race for stage points from the first lap. A driver starting 25th has to reach the front half of the field first. However long that takes and however much tire it uses, those resources do not come back once the stage lap expires. In a format with no resets, that cost is permanent. What that costs at Kansas specifically depends on what the track does to a car starting deep in the field.

What 25th at Kansas Speedway actually means

Kansas Speedway is a 1.5-mile intermediate oval where Cup cars run around 170 mph. Aerodynamic conditions carry more influence at those speeds than at shorter tracks. The Next Gen Cup car is sensitive to running in disturbed air behind other vehicles. Hamlin and other drivers have noted publicly that prolonged time in traffic changes how the car handles across a stint.

The historical record at Kansas provides context worth noting. Going into Sunday, 12 of the 13 most recent Cup races at the track were won from inside the top 10. 92% of Kansas winners in recent history came from the top 10 at the start.

There was also a specific information problem entering this weekend. Kansas came roughly 12 weeks after the Cup Series’ most recent race at a 1.5-mile track, Chicagoland Speedway in early July. Teams arrived roughly 12 weeks removed from any intermediate-track race mileage. Christopher Bell’s crew chief Adam Stevens noted that the field was working primarily from older data on the 1.5-mile setup. Teams had almost no current-weekend practice data to work from.

There was no tire data, no long-run aero balance, and no setup feedback from current conditions to work from.

NASCAR also introduced changes to the front-splitter struts ahead of North Wilkesboro in mid-July. Stevens specifically said the significance of those changes grows with vehicle speed. Kansas is one of the faster intermediates on the schedule. It is exactly where teams had the least real-world data on how the update performs. Starting 25th with no fresh setup data from the weekend is a different problem than recovering from a poor qualifying run.

Kansas begins a three-race Chase stretch of consecutive 1.5-mile tracks, followed by Las Vegas and Charlotte. Toyota has been especially strong at these venues in 2026. Toyota drivers combined for 15 of the 25 available top-5 finishes at intermediates this season. They led 61.5% of the laps at those tracks and won three times. Hamlin, Bell, and Ty Gibbs all start in the first six Kansas positions. Hamlin carries four career Kansas wins into Sunday, the most of any active driver. Larson won there in both 2024 and 2025 and has led more than 1,000 laps at the track in his career. Blaney, who drives a Ford for Team Penske, starts 25th behind all of them.

If Toyota builds on that intermediate strength and Blaney is starting deep for all three races of that stretch, the points gap at the top could shift considerably. Hamlin is already just one point behind Larson. Logano and Bell are within 17.

Pit strategy can change things. The spring Kansas race proved it. Briscoe moved from outside the top 10 to third on the final overtime restart by taking four tires while the leaders took two. That kind of move does not require a good starting position. It requires a car fast enough to capitalize quickly on fresher rubber. Getting to a position where that option is viable is part of what makes the start matter.

One common assumption about pole position is also worth questioning here. Stevens analyzed pit stall performance through the Next Gen era at Kansas. The eighth stall, he found, has produced the best average finish and stop time at the track, not the first. The advantage from qualifying well is real, but the relationship between starting position, pit stall, and race outcome is not perfectly linear.

The Kansas situation did not appear out of nowhere. It is the third time the same sequence has played out in four Chase races.

Three NASCAR Chase races, the same formula

The Chase opened at Darlington Raceway with qualifying washed out. The previous race was the regular-season finale at Daytona. At superspeedways, a single accident involving multiple cars can rearrange finishing positions. The result often has little to do with how fast any individual car actually ran.

Multiple contenders had been caught in Daytona incidents. Hocevar crashed there and started 34th at Darlington. Chris Buescher started 35th. Blaney finished 33rd at Daytona after a last-lap incident and started 24th at Darlington. Before the race, Hocevar’s crew chief Luke Lambert acknowledged that their metric was bad coming from the week before. He said this even though the team felt it had a competitive Darlington package. More than half of the 16 Chase drivers started outside the top 15.

Race two was at Gateway. Qualifying took place normally. The metric set qualifying order rather than the starting grid, and lap times determined positions. No controversy around the formula.

Bristol was race three. Qualifying was rained out again. Larson, who had just won at Gateway, started from the pole. Blaney started 29th, with his starting position determined by the performance metric using his fourth-place finish at Gateway.

Three of four Chase races have now had their grids determined entirely by the metric. A formula built as a backup procedure has been the primary grid-setting mechanism for 75% of the 2026 postseason.

Blaney has said publicly that the metric is not a bad system. His concern is specific. Daytona can shift finishing positions across the field from a single accident. Then came Bristol, where a race he was dominating ended in a 33rd because of one lap of contact. He also acknowledged what a random draw would create. If a title contender drew the pole through luck, complaints about an unearned advantage would be immediate.

Cliff Daniels, who is Larson’s crew chief, has argued the opposite. He has said publicly that teams should start in order of owner-points standings when qualifying is unavailable. The notable part of that position is who holds it. Larson has been one of the primary beneficiaries of the formula during this Chase. At Bristol, winning Gateway the week before handed him the pole when qualifying was canceled. His crew chief still thinks the mechanism needs changing.

Whether NASCAR changes it, and what each option costs

Using Chase standings as the starting order during a rainout would tie grid positions directly to championship performance. The downside is that the points leader would get a structural grid advantage every time qualifying is rained out. Recent car form would not factor in at all.

Reducing the previous-race weighting from 70% to something lower would make a single crash less influential the following weekend. Raising the owner-points component alongside that would help balance the calculation. But it would not eliminate the recency bias, only reduce how extreme it can become.

A multi-race average would use the previous three finishes rather than just one. That would shrink the impact of a Bristol incident considerably. The trade-off is a more complicated formula at a time when NASCAR has pushed for simpler, more transparent systems.

A protected Chase tier would place all 16 playoff drivers in the first 16 grid positions, using their own internal metric order. Non-Chase cars would fill in behind them. It would guarantee that a single bad result cannot send a championship contender to the back. The objection is that it produces an advantage no qualifying performance actually earned.

There is no clean solution. Every option trades one problem for a different one. What has changed is that the question is no longer theoretical. The same issue has surfaced in three consecutive qualifying cancellations within a single championship segment.

The standings that put all of it in perspective

After Bristol, the championship was historically tight at the top. Larson led Hamlin by one point. Logano was 16 back. Bell was 17 back. Blaney was 52 behind Larson. Briscoe was 87 back.

A win pays 55 points. Stage wins accumulate through all 10 races. There are no round resets between now and Phoenix. Every Kansas point goes permanently into the final championship total.

The Kansas grid put Logano first, Larson second, Bell third, Gibbs fifth, and Hamlin sixth. Five of the top six drivers in the championship occupy the first six starting positions. Blaney, sixth in the standings, starts 25th. Briscoe, ninth in the standings, starts 23rd. Hocevar, eighth in the standings, starts fourth.

Racing Insights’ season-long speed data going into Kansas ranked Blaney third in the field, behind only Logano and Larson. His underlying numbers this season reflect a legitimate title contender. His grid position does not.

Three measurements of the same driver entering the same race: third in season-long speed, sixth in the championship, 25th on the grid. Each one is accurate. Together, they describe what happens when a qualifying formula meets a championship format it was never designed for. Rain has forced that meeting three times in four postseason weekends.

The metric is not malfunctioning. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The problem is that it was not designed for this. It was built to replace a missing qualifying session on an ordinary race weekend. It is now being asked to help set the grid for a championship measured across 10 accumulated races. Three weekends into the 2026 postseason, those two purposes are not pointing in the same direction.