Corey Heim won the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 26, his second Cup Series victory of the season. In past NASCAR seasons, that trophy would have all but locked him into the playoffs. In 2026 it doesn’t, and that single fact is reshaping how people search for answers to a basic question: how does the NASCAR playoffs actually work this year?
The short version is that NASCAR brought back an old points format called “the Chase” for 2026, and it changed several rules fans had gotten used to since 2014. Here is what the picture looks like with four regular-season races left, and why a two-time winner like Heim still isn’t guaranteed a spot.
How many drivers make the NASCAR playoffs?
Sixteen. That part hasn’t changed. After the 26-race regular season closes, the top 16 drivers in points advance to the postseason, according to NASCAR’s own announcement of the 2026 format. Through the Brickyard 400, 22 of those 26 races are complete, so the field is being set almost entirely on merit at this point, with four races left to shuffle the bottom of the grid.
Does a win still guarantee a playoff berth?
No, and this is the change that trips up a lot of fans. From 2014 through 2025, any regular-season race winner punched a playoff ticket regardless of where they sat in points. That rule is gone in 2026. Heim’s Brickyard win was a genuine crown-jewel result, and it made him the first driver to claim two of his opening 15 Cup starts since A.J. Foyt in 1965. But Heim is running a partial 12-race Cup schedule for 23XI Racing and had made just 8 of the season’s 22 points races before Indianapolis. A part-time entry like his isn’t built to bank the points a top-16 finish requires, win or no win, no matter how many of the remaining races he runs. Under the old format, that Brickyard trophy would have made him playoff-eligible on the spot. Under the 2026 rules, it doesn’t buy him a place.
What happens to points when the playoffs start?
They reset, though not to one flat number the way recent seasons did it. The 2026 Chase gives the regular-season champion 2,100 points, the runner-up 2,075, third place 2,065, and so on down to 2,000 points for the 16th and final qualifier, tightening to five-point gaps between spots by the middle of the field. Race winners now collect 55 points instead of 40, and there are no elimination rounds. All 16 drivers race every one of the 10 Chase events, and whoever holds the most points after Homestead-Miami is champion. NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell described the goal as “rewarding driver and team performance each and every race.”
Who’s on the bubble right now?
Denny Hamlin leads with 886 points, an 84-point cushion over Tyler Reddick (802), with Ryan Blaney (766) and Ty Gibbs (751) rounding out a clear top four. Carson Hocevar, Chase Elliott, Chase Briscoe, Kyle Larson, Chris Buescher and Christopher Bell fill out the rest of the top 10, per NASCAR’s official Brickyard 400 recap. Line up the full field, though, and the real tension sits at the bottom. Austin Cindric holds the 16th and final transfer spot with 518 points, and Ryan Preece is the first driver out in 17th with 480. That’s a 38-point gap with four races to go, which works out to an average edge of only around nine or ten points a race, smaller than the swing between a solid top-15 run and a rough day two rows back. One bad pit stop or one strong recovery drive over the next month could flip that spot more than once before the field locks.
It’s a tighter, more consequential stretch than the schedule made it look a few weeks ago, back when Hamlin and Reddick were separated by a single point heading into Chicagoland. Since then, Hamlin has pulled away up front while the fight for a playoff berth has shifted to the other end of the standings. Kyle Larson, currently eighth, is a reminder that plenty of proven winners still have work to do, following his own laps-led streak into Atlanta earlier this month.
Four races remain before the field locks. Whoever sits in the top 16 when NASCAR reaches the regular-season finale gets a clean slate and a real shot at the title. Everyone else, wins included, watches from home.
