Richard Petty won seven Cup Series championships without ever having to worry about a playoff reset. Every race counted, and the driver who put together the strongest season was the one who lifted the trophy. That is why The King has never been particularly fond of NASCAR’s modern championship format. But it was the elimination format that really tested Petty’s patience.
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He felt it failed to reflect a team’s true performance over the season and could reward drivers who got hot at the right time under the “win and you’re in” format. CEO Steve O’Donnell got rid of that system before the start of this season, bringing back the Chase and putting more emphasis on consistency. So that should mean Petty is happy, right? Not really.
“If you’re not careful, the championship’s going to be over before they get down to the last two or three races. They didn’t design it that way, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s not a good system. Basically, if you run pretty good in Kansas, you’re going to run pretty good in Vegas,” Petty assessed on Petty Family Racing.
These are concerns that have been floated in years past as well, particularly the discussion regarding the driver being crowned with races to spare.
NASCAR had previously justified the elimination-style format by arguing that fans could lose interest in races that no longer had championship implications. But in 2024, Denny Hamlin pushed back on that idea on his Actions Detrimental podcast, arguing that fans care more about individual race wins than the points themselves.
“There’s been a million surveys, but the fans have absolutely spoken in their fan council survey that NASCAR sends out that they don’t care about points as much as they care about who wins a particular race,” Hamlin said. “So, the whole argument that some of the shills are making is that, ‘Oh, well, you don’t want someone clinching early, people will tune out.’ That is absolutely not true. People will tune in to watch Chase [Elliott], and [Kyle] Larson, and the popular drivers.”
Petty brings this problem up again. And what we saw in Kansas this past weekend might point toward a certain driver dominating the next few races to all but seal the fate of the Cup Series championship.
Kyle Larson, who struggled for much of 2026 with HMS’ handling issues and remained winless, finished second in the Bristol night race before following it up with a win at Kansas, where he led 237 laps. Once considered a long shot to contend for the championship entering the Chase, he now sits first in the standings, 26 points ahead of Hamlin.
And Larson’s strength at 1.5-mile tracks could be an ominous sign of what’s to come. The next two races at Las Vegas and Charlotte are both at intermediate tracks, and if the HMS driver puts together another couple of strong runs, his rivals could start to feel the championship slipping away before they even reach the final round.
There have already been concerned discussions around the garage about how demoralizing the Hollywood Casino 400 must have been for those who have some daylight between themselves and the race leader, who earned 76 points over the weekend.
“This was a very, very damaging and maybe demoralizing day for the field because a 76-point day means that not one other Chase driver was able to gain any points on the leader. And more than that, not a single, not a single Chase driver lost less than 24 points to the lead today,” veteran reporter Jeff Gluck said on The Teardown podcast.
Larson’s 76-point haul at Kansas showed just how quickly the gap can grow in the new Chase format.
He swept both stages and won the race, while even Austin Cindric and Hamlin, who finished second and third, scored 52 and 51 points respectively. That still left them 24 and 25 points behind Larson in a single race, giving the HMS driver a huge cushion with six races remaining in the Chase.
Dale Inman, speaking on Petty’s podcast, said that “Larson stunk up the show pretty big,” hinting that he is taking the fun out of a Chase that should be more competitive. Petty would likely agree, considering he hinted that the new system could play to Larson’s advantage.
Still, he showered praise on the defending Cup Series champion, saying, “He was the class of the field for sure.”
In the garage, however, drivers have welcomed the return of the Chase with open arms. Consistency matters again. A driver who has been good throughout the season does not have to worry about one bad weekend wiping away all that hard work. At the same time, someone who has underdelivered all year cannot simply win at the right time and hold up the Cup Series trophy.
It seems Petty wants something else entirely. He didn’t like the playoff system, and he isn’t sold on the Chase either, albeit for different reasons.
The former didn’t reward consistency enough, while the latter could allow a driver to build too much of a points cushion over the 10-race stretch, especially with favorable tracks on the schedule. For Petty, neither system quite captures what a championship should be. In a 2016 interview with Autoweek, The King explained what he missed about the old system:
“I liked the full-season deal, but the Chase was a great PR move. It put NASCAR on the same scale as major-league sports that already had postseason playoffs for their championships. To me, it’s made us a major-league player. The Chase has been great, but it’s hard to look at my championships or Earnhardt’s or Pearson’s and see what we did to get ours, then see some guy maybe win just one race (the finale) to get his,” he said.
Petty was referring to the “Latford” system, which was in place from 1975 to 2003. During that era, the champion was crowned purely on points accumulated across all 30-plus races, from the season opener to the finale, with no postseason reset. Alas for him, that’s long gone now.
The Chase now moves to Las Vegas Motor Speedway next weekend before heading to Charlotte Motor Speedway. Both are 1.5-mile intermediate ovals, giving Larson two more tracks where he could extend his points advantage.
After Charlotte, the field still has Talladega, Martinsville, Homestead-Miami and Phoenix ahead. Plenty can change over those four races, but Petty’s concern is that Larson may not need to win them. If he keeps running near the front, the points he has already banked could make the gap increasingly difficult to close.
And that is where Petty’s concern with the new Chase comes in. NASCAR brought back a format designed to reward consistency, but he wonders if too much of it can work against the championship itself. If Larson keeps piling up strong finishes, the very consistency NASCAR wanted could end up making the title fight less of a fight.