NASCAR will use owner points to set field after rainouts for 2027

NASCAR will use owner points to set the field in 2027 when qualifying is rained out.

“That will make it a little bit easier to explain to our fans,” NASCAR's president of event management, John Probst told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “There is no math involved other than you just look at the owners’ points, and that’s how we’ll line them up on Sunday.”

The change will move away from using the performance metric to set the line-up. NASCAR implemented the metric during the COVID pandemic, when the sport wasn’t holding practice or qualifying and needed a way to set the field. The metric is a weighted formula: 70% previous race finish and 30% owner points position.

However, it became a bigger topic of conversation within the industry this year given the number of washouts. It escalated when NASCAR had to use the metric to set the field in the Chase at Darlington (Sept. 6), Bristol (Sept. 19), Kansas (Sept. 27), and Charlotte (Oct. 11).

“A lot of the work that we did on the metric where we take your finish the week before and then add that to your owners’ position serves a good purpose for qualifying,” Probst said. “I think, though, when we look at it and see how it happened this year, I think we had four of our first six or something like that get rained out for qualifying, and then you really do see some of the potential unfairness in how it was going to lay out when we did the wet weather line-up that way.”

NASCAR is also looking at other ways to change qualifying next season.

One of those, Probst said, is looking at potentially doing one round of single-car qualifying at superspeedways. Currently, the top 10 drivers from the first round advance to the pole round.

Second, NASCAR is considering an All-Star qualifying format for a “very select few” races. This would include not only the driver on the track, but the team performing a pit stop. There is intrigue in seeing the fan reaction around more activity with the qualifying events

“Kind of making it more of a team qualifying versus just a driver going out there going as fast as he can,” said Probst. “We’re still working on that with the teams, but that is something we’d like to do next year for a handful of events.”