NASCAR changed its playoff format to the Chase for the 2026 season. Going into the race in Vegas, the halfway mark of the Chase, voices around NASCAR as well as those in the garage don’t like the format. While the opposing opinions aren’t necessarily along the lines of support for the win-and-you’re-in format, there are those who are enjoying everything that the Chase is about.
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Elliott was one of the drivers who spoke in favour of the Chase even after a dismal start to the postseason himself. Elliott was asked if he was surprised by the way the Chase is taking shape, and the Hendrick Motorsports driver voiced his opinion in favour of the Chase.
“I wouldn’t say I’m surprised by any of it,” said Elliott to Frontstretch. “Honestly, I feel like it’s working as it was intended to work. You have kind of a reset, with ten to go and good performance is rewarded like always and I think you have a larger sample set to kind of let that come out in the wash. So no. I wouldn’t say I’m surprised by any of it.”
Elliott harped on the one point on which the Chase works as opposed to the previous format: season-long consistency. With 16 drivers qualifying based on how many points they had gathered all season long, making every race count to the result. The old format allowed for teams to not put their best foot forward until it really mattered.
But what has surprised most, and the reason behind the debate over the Chase format was Elliott’s HMS teammate Kyle Larson’s Kansas dominance. Larson picked up 76 points, the maximum possible in a race, and that swung the table in a manner that most wouldn’t have expected. Every driver in the Chase lost a minimum of 24 points to Larson in Kansas.
That dominant Larson drive sent a spiral through the garage and pundits alike, with insiders saying that it would be too hard to catch Larson and even saying a deficit of over 50 points would be impossible to make up over the course of six races.
However, Elliott believes the math is different this time, and through the season there has been enough proof to show that massive deficits can be overturned in the matter of a few races.
“I think that you can certainly put me in the grouping of, I would say most of the rest of us in here when you look, and I’ve referenced this a few times, when you looked at how Tyler started the season and the lead that he had over course of the first five or six weeks,” Elliott said. “I’m like, gosh, 100-point lead, dang, that’d have a hard time messing that up really.”
“And little did you realize, or little did I realize people stack a couple wins and next thing you know guys can have 70-plus point days if they’re having a good day, which is just a really massive number,” he added. “So math is certainly hard sometimes. But yeah again good performance is rewarded and certainly the added bonuses of winning and those 20 points certainly and potentially the fastest lap if you have that it, it didn’t sound like a lot. But everyone stacks.”
Larson’s 76-point day came on the back of 10 points each for winning stage one and stage two in Kansas, as well as the race victory that gives the driver 55 points, 20 points more than second place, for which a driver gets 35 points. Larson picked up the fastest lap to get the additional bonus points.
Elliott’s thoughts lead us to believe that there is a bigger deficit that can be made up as opposed to the 50-point margin which insiders like Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi called too much.
After Vegas, there will be five races left. The only math that a Chase driver needs to look at is what has Larson done to topple Denny Hamlin’s lead and build one for himself. The answer they get to that question will be what is required to make a comeback.
Stage points are crucial. Larson has picked up 67 stage points going into Kansas; Hamlin, on the other hand, just 46. The difference between Larson and Hamlin is 26 points.
The key, therefore, is running well all race long to pick up stage points, and a few wins along the way should be good enough for any driver in the Chase to have a genuine shot at lifting the Cup title at Homestead.