NASCAR Standings — All Series

Denny Hamlin leads the 2026 NASCAR Cup standings with 969 points, 115 clear of Ryan Blaney (854). Through the early weeks of the season, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver has built the margin on the strength of 14 top-5 finishes, 16 top-10s, 4 wins, the best cumulative score in the Cup garage since the Daytona 500 kicked off the regular-season opener.

The Cup playoff cutline sits at the top 16, the field that advances to The Chase. Shane van Gisbergen currently holds the 16th and final transfer spot with 567 points, 50 ahead of Ryan Preece as the first driver on the outside looking in. Austin Cindric occupies the 15th-spot bubble with 574 points, and every stage point and top-10 finish matters because a single bad day can swap positions in this stretch of the calendar. Follow the full weekend slate on the race schedule and revisit each round in the race results archive.

The 2026 Chase format is a clean break from the 2014-2025 elimination playoffs. There are no rounds, no cuts, and no reset between Round of 16, 12, 8, and 4; all 16 qualifiers stay eligible for the full 10-race postseason. Points are reset entering The Chase with Seed 1 starting at 2,100 points and each subsequent seed losing five. During the postseason, a race win is worth 55 points (a 15-point jump over previous seasons), and the driver with the highest cumulative score after the Homestead-Miami finale is crowned champion; Phoenix is no longer the title-deciding venue.

Across the support series, Justin Allgaier leads the 2026 O'Reilly Auto Parts Series standings with 1048 points, where the top 12 advance to the Chase field. Layne Riggs heads the Craftsman Truck Series order on 753 points, and the Trucks use a tighter top-10 cutline over a shorter 23-race regular season. Each series runs its own independent points championship, so a driver can be locked into one Chase field while still chasing a wildcard appearance in another.