The NASCAR championship race is going to start rotating across several venues in 2026, starting with Homestead-Miami Speedway, and may even include a championship round that feature three races to decide the titlist.
There is no shortage of tracks owned by NASCAR and Speedway Motorsports that could be included:
Homestead-Miami Speedway
Charlotte Motor Speedway
Phoenix Raceway
Darlington Raceway
Nashville Superspeedway
Martinsville Speedway
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Texas Motor Speedway
What you will notice is no superspeedways or road courses and NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Innovation Officer Ben Kennedy explained why:
“Never say never, but I think we’ve unanimously agreed that it needs to look and feel like what we would expect traditional NASCAR racing to look and feel like,” Kennedy said. “Short tracks, intermediate tracks, mile tracks are all on the board. Superspeedways, I think we all feel like right now we wouldn’t consider that as a championship venue, not that Daytona isn’t a championship caliber venue.
“There are a lot of story lines that come out of those events, and we want to make sure that, when we go to Homestead, Miami, or Phoenix or wherever it might be in the future, that there is a lot of strategy and that a lot of our championship drivers are also contending for the victory at the end of that race.
“We talked about that. We’ve talked about road courses as well. Again, never say never, but road courses are probably lower on the list as we think about championship venues. So we’re really going to hone in on short tracks and I would say mile-and-a-halfs for now.”
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