The system would pay 100 points for a victory with 70 points for second. Third-place would pay 50 points with 40 for fourth before paying 35-30-25-20-15-12-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 and every position beyond 21st also getting a point because it is NASCAR and everyone should get a point! No bonus points. No stage points. It is all based on finishing position.
It is pretty straight-forward, not much else must be explained. These standings are based on a full season aggregate. Let's break it down in sections.
1. Denny Hamlin: 1,201
2. Christopher Bell: 1,152
3. Kyle Larson: 1,123
In case you are wondering, the championship would have come down to the final race, and these three drivers would have entered the finale with a chance at the title.
Hamlin would have entered the finale with 1,171 points, 29 points more than Bell and 98 points ahead of Larson.
Larson would have needed to win with Bell finishing sixth or worse and Hamlin finishing 20th or worse. That wasn't an impossible result.
For Bell, he needed to score at least 30 points more than Hamlin to win the championship. Bell could have won the title with a victory with Hamlin finishing second, which is what NASCAR wants based on the current "winner-take-all" finale, but the worst Bell could finish and win the title would be fifth, and then he would need Hamlin to finish 16th or worse, a plausible result.
It wouldn't be guaranteed that it would come down to the final lap, but it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility either.
We would have had the driver with the most victories (six with Hamlin), a driver with the third-most victories (four with Bell) and one of four drivers who entered the finale with three victories (Larson) competing for the title. All three of these drivers had at least 13 top five finishes entering the finale. Bell and Larson both had over 20. Hamlin would have been on the low side with only 17 top ten finishes entering Phoenix.
That feels like a championship picture entering the finale that we saw for year-after-year in the Cup Series, and we all would have been fine with the drivers competing. Two of those three ended up competing for the championship anyway in 2025, and there was a strong case that Bell should have been in the final four drivers.
This would have been a satisfying championship finale. Hamlin could have finished second and lost the title to Bell. The last lap dramatics would still have been there. Larson would have needed his best race and the luckiest pair of results to win the championship. It was a stretch, but it wasn't impossible. In the current Cup series, such days aren't out of the norm.
Of course, it must be acknowledged that even in this system, William Byron losing a tire and hitting the wall with three laps to go, forcing overtime, would have still presented a situation where a two-tire or four-tire stop could determine the championship. That might require another conversation about whether NASCAR should keep overtime or how overtime rules should work. We will save that for another day.
The argument in this case is, with the full season aggregate, it would at least be organic. What happened this year was Hamlin had no safety. The only way to win the championship would be to finish ahead of Larson, Bell and Chase Briscoe. Everything Hamlin did in that race and in every race prior had no bearing on how the championship was decided.
With this proposed system, Bell could finish third and Hamlin could finish seventh, and Hamlin would have won the title by four points. It would have been stressful but it wouldn't have been a case of Hamlin had too many cars between him and the car he must pass in a two-lap shootout.
There would have been plenty to watch and keep you on edge in the final race of the season, and it would not have involved the points resetting. There would not be multiple rounds. It would be one season, every race played into deciding who was champion, and the trophy still could have changed hands on the final day of the season. We can live with that even if it didn't turn out to be the most thrilling finale we ever saw.
Let's cover the rest of the standings.
4. Ryan Blaney: 1,055
5. Chase Briscoe: 1,018
6. William Byron: 909
7: Chase Elliott: 803
8: Shane van Gisbergen: 605
9: Alex Bowman: 577
10. Tyler Reddick: 571
Blaney's fourth victory of the season in the finale would have jumped him ahead of Briscoe for fourth.
Byron would have been sixth. Let's acknowledge in a 15-race span from Michigan in one to Bristol in September, Byron had two top five finishes, four top ten finishes and 11 races outside the top ten, six of which were outside the top 20. He also ended the season with three finishes of 25th or worse in the final four races. That Martinsville victory did a lot of heavy-lifting to put him in the top four.
Chase Elliott's good season places him seventh
The next section is where you can see how important winning races is because Shane van Gisbergen would have been eighth, thanks to five victories. Van Gisbergen won five races in 2025, the second-most in the Cup Series! I don't think that part has been mentioned enough. The only driver with more victories was Hamlin. Van Gisbergen won more races than Larson, Bell, Blaney, Byron, Briscoe, Elliott and everyone else behind him in the championship. They were all road course races, and we all thought van Gisbergen was going to win at least two of them. I don't think anyone imagined he would win five of six road course races.
With how fluky NASCAR races can be with untimely cautions, double-file restarts, driving standards, being caught in the middle of the field because of pitting before a stage break and then drivers staying out, it felt natural to think van Gisbergen wasn't going to win two or three road course races just because of how races shake out. There was bound to be one go against him, and the worst race he had was sixth at Austin when he didn't quite have the pace but was still one of the better cars.
Van Gisbergen's victories get him eighth in the championship, but it goes to show how well you must do to just bank a lot of victories and win with many poor finishes. Van Gisbergen finished 20th or worse 21 times. It would have taken at least 12 victories to beat Hamlin this season if you finished 20th or worse in all the remaining races. The likelihood of that happening is dismal at best. Van Gisbergen gives us the best example of what happens if a driver is feast or famine. It will end in a flattering championship position, but not necessarily a championship or a shot at one.
Bowman and Reddick went winless but would have rounded out the top ten. That makes sense. Both didn't have great year. Both did well. This is what consistency looks like without victories. They had 16 and 14 top ten finishes respectively. Both had over six top five finishes.
11. Bubba Wallace: 543
12. Joey Logano: 532
13. Chris Buescher: 520
14. Ross Chastain: 518
15: Brad Keselowski: 488
16. Ryan Preece: 438
17. Ty Gibbs: 418
18: Josh Berry: 385
19. Carson Hocevar: 331
20. Daniel Suárez: 302
This feels right for a bunch of drivers who had good races but not a great number of good races. Wallace and Logano each won once. Each maybe should have won one more. Buescher did well with top ten finishes, but he only had five top five finishes. Chastain won once but had four top five finishes the entire season.
Keselowski had 13 top ten finishes all season, and Preece had 14 with only three top five finishes.
Gibbs had 15 finishes of 20th or worse. How high in the championship do you think he should finish?
Drivers that had one or two great days are properly positioned. Berry won at Las Vegas, but he had two other top five finishes the rest of the season, one was the race before his Las Vegas victory when he was fourth at Phoenix. His only other top five was second at Loudon. Berry completed the fewest laps this season among the full-time drivers as he had nine retirements. The only full-time driver who failed to finish more races was Cody Ware, and Ware only failed to finish two more than Berry.
Hocevar and Suárez each had a pair of runner-up finishes this season, Hocevar at Atlanta and Nashville; Suárez at Las Vegas and Daytona. They both had 19 finishes outside the top twenty. They both should be on the fringe of the top 20 in the championship.
21. Kyle Busch: 302
22. Michael McDowell: 294
23. Austin Cindric: 284
24. Erik Jones: 281
25. John Hunter Nemechek: 276
26. A.J. Allmendinger: 249
27. Austin Dillon: 237
28. Zane Smith: 231
29. Todd Gilliland: 228
30. Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.: 163
Busch would have lost the tiebreaker to Suárez as Busch's best finish all season was fifth. Looking at these standings, seven of these drivers would have finished exactly where they finished in the actual 2025 standings. The three exceptions are two drivers who made the playoffs thanks to one victory (Cindric and Dillon) and Gilliland would have dropped from 27th to 29th.
Cindric had two top five finishes and five top tens. Dillon's only top five was his Richmond victory, and his best finish in the 11 races after that night was 13th with eight finishes of 20th or worse.
This is where they should have finished in the championship! Let's not confuse winning one race with being championship worthy.
31. Justin Haley: 153
32. Cole Custer: 141
33. Noah Gragson: 132
34. Tyler Dillon: 90
35. Riley Herbst: 60
36. Jimmie Johnson: 51
37. Cody Ware: 43
For the sake of fullness, here are the remaining full-time championship drivers, plus Jimmie Johnson because Johnson was third in the Daytona 500.
We will know soon enough what NASCAR decides to do with its championship format. I do not suspect it will fully change points distribution, but it should if it wants to properly award winning and prevent drivers from just finishing eighth every race and winning a championship. It is more likely going to be the 3-3-4 playoff format or reverting to a ten-race aggregate like the original Chase for the Cup. Even with those systems, the points distribution should still be addressed to award winning more.
