Every Point Counts — But Don’t Fret Over Point Standings Just Yet

I post a yearly reminder not to get too bent out of shape by the point standings early in the season. But NASCAR changed the points system for 2026. Now, they remind us, every point counts.

So does that make my long-standing advice incorrect?

It does not.

The Stick-and-Ball Analogy

Getting worried about your favorite driver’s NASCAR season based on the first few races is like predicting the outcome of a basketball game based on the first five minutes. One team might lead 12-0. But there are 48 minutes in professional basketball game. Those five minutes represent a little more than 10% of the game. Nothing precludes the other team from rallying later in the game.

Football teams may be down by three touchdowns at the half and still win the game.

If you aren’t a fan of comparing NASCAR to stick-and-ball sports, try this one: Every lap in a race matters, but only the last lap determines the majority of the points awarded.

Austin Cindric had a great race going at Atlanta. He won Stage 1 and led laps. An accident dropped him to a 26th-place finish.

NASCAR is even more unpredictable that stick-and-ball sports, so the advice applies even more to racing than to my football/basketball analogies.

Current Point Standings Are Too Bunched Up After Two Races

The New Points System

• We stick with the 40 to 1 award from P1 to P40, but the winner now gets 15 points on top of the 40.
• Stage winners get 10 points. Everyone finishing in the top 10 gets points as before.
• The driver with the fastest lap (set while racing on the lead lap) gets a point.

That means

• Each race awards 946 points among 40 competitors.
• The maximum number of points a single driver can earn from a race is 76 points.
• We must also add in the 10 points a driver could earn from winning one of the Duels.

A perfect record after two races would be 162 points. Every driver running for the Championship right now has between 14 and 125 points. That’s not much of a range.

The Points Standings

The point standing numbers in the table below fall into five groups. Note that the 2026-0 column represents points from the Duels. Duel points are counted as Daytona points, so even though there are three columns, there are still just two races.

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Small Points Means Big Changes

Let’s use Connor Zilisch as an example. Zilisch had a rough time in his full-time Cup Series debut, earning just 14 points total. That’s an average of seven points per race.

Let’s say (and this isn’t totally outside the realm of possibility) that Zilisch wins both stages of the race at COTA and the race itself. He also has the fastest lap. That adds 76 points to his total and raises his average points per race to 25.3. That’s a change of 18.3 points per race from race 2 to race 3 That pops him up quite a bit in the standings.

Points Available vs. Total Points

On a less optimistic note, let’s say Reddick crashes out of COTA on Lap 1. He now has 126 points after three races. That drops his points per race from 62.5 to 42 — a change of 20.5 average points per race. Anyone from the blue group on up who won maximum points could overtake him for the points lead.

But that’s only because the 76 maximum points available are so large compared to the point totals.

Let’s say after race 15, Reddick has a total of 700 points. If he muffs race 16 and earns only 1 point, his points per race change from 46.7 to 43.8. That’s a change of only 2.9 average points per race compared to the 20.5-point change if the same thing happened in race 3.

The First Two Races are Atypical and Thus Predict Little

The Daytona 500 has been the lead-off race for the season for most of NASCAR’s existence. Only recently, however, has the NASCAR schedule has so many pack-racing events. But for the last three years, the first two events on the schedule have been pack-racing/mass-dnf events.

Pack-racing tracks comprise just 19.2% of the regular-season schedule. The full 26 races of the regular season span a diversity of track types. How well a driver does in two races where much is out of his hands and in the hands of Lady Luck has little bearing on the rest of the season.

And the fact that the third race is now a road course means that the series won’t hit a traditional oval until Phoenix in week four.

But Every Point Counts, Right?

Yes. It does. Last week, Austin Dillon was involved in the 11-car crash with three laps to go in scheduled distance. As soon as the crash happened, team owner Richard Childress was on the radio telling him to make sure he crossed the start-finish line because he would then pass many of the drivers who were stuck on the track and jump ahead of them in position. And thus points.

As it happened, Dillon had no steering and could only get as far at the No. 43’s pit box (before the start-finish line) because he would have hit the inside pit wall.

We all remember Carl Edwards losing the championship to Tony Stewart by losing the tiebreaker. One point would have made all the difference.

But that type of finish is statistically quite rare. The drivers hovering near the top of the point standings by the time the series returns to Daytona in August should be nearing 850 to 900 points. Those near the cut-off line for making The Chase will likely have around 550 points. A few points here and there could make the difference in whether a car makes The Chase or not.

But that’s the teams’ problem. If you’re a fan, it’s far too early in the season to be getting yourself twisted in knots over the points. My advice to those of you fretting about your driver being at the bottom of the standings (or crowing about being at the top) is to stop looking at the points for the next six weeks. I promise you they will change, in some cases significantly.

For example:

Last year after two races, three drivers were tied for 6th place in the point standings with 61 points: John Hunter Nemechek, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Kyle Larson. After 26 races, Larson had 801 points (third place in the standings), Nemechek had 486 and Stenhouse had 436

Check back with the points in about mid-April. That will give you a much better picture of how your driver is doing.