The start of the NASCAR season is always a feel-good moment. No offense to the snow-dashed Clash of a week ago, I’m speaking of the actual start to the actual Cup Series season, when the green flag drops this Sunday on the 68th edition of the Great American Race.
Let’s hope it’s the Great American Reset Button.
The best part of every season’s start is looking around the sunny Daytona starting grid and seeing every uniform, every pit box and every car sparkling. As Rusty Wallace once said, “Daytona 500 prerace is the happiest place on the planet, and the cleanest. And that lasts about one lap.” Because then begins all of those rubs and pit stops and rain delays and fuses lit and fistfights that spend the next nine months dishing out stains of sweat and oil, with a little blood and champagne mixed in for good measure.
However, it is hard for this old press-box mind to recall a more eagerly shared desire among every resident of the NASCAR garage that this year’s first official green flag be used as a washcloth, wiping away an offseason of anxiety that everyone is equally anxious to get on with forgetting.
That’s why this season, more than any in recent memory — or, OK, any memory at all — feels like a watershed year for NASCAR. A chance to bring back the good vibes and perhaps restore a lot of lost trust between the grandstand and the people they pay good money to watch compete at 200 mph, and that starts with mended fences between the ones those fans watch race and the people who govern them.
For some perspective, just think about what this sport was when the last checkered flag was shown at the 2025 season finale in Phoenix, barely 100 days ago, versus what it will be when racing finally resumes this weekend.
Last fall, team charters were not permanent. Last fall, everyone was only speculating about the outcome of the antitrust lawsuit that had loomed for nearly two years and was still a month away, Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan’s 23XI taking the sanctioning body to task over those charters, most hoping for a settlement before it all crashed into the courtroom. Last fall, we hadn’t yet read the texts from NASCAR brass calling its team ownership royalty, among many unflattering remarks, a stupid redneck. Last fall, NASCAR still had a commissioner in Steve Phelps. Last fall, the decade-old postseason elimination playoff format still existed. Last fall, Hamlin’s father Dennis was known among most fans only for his role as paternal inspiration, fighting through failing health to publicly support his son’s down-to-OT fight to come up short once again seeking to win a Cup championship.
Last fall, Greg Biffle was still alive.
Now, our friend Biff, his family, and a beloved member of the garage family are gone. Team charters are now indeed permanent. That settlement indeed came, but after a courtroom battle so vicious, Phelps is no longer in the sport. Many feelings were hurt in and around that courtroom and still are. Days later, Hamlin lost his father, victim of a house fire as Hamlin himself suffered a shoulder injury. But now Denny Hamlin shows no signs of losing the drive that forced NASCAR’s hand in court as he prepares to make a run once again at that elusive championship. His upcoming campaign already feels like a revenge tour. The Playoffs are gone and the Chase format is back, due also in no small part to the efforts and the heartbreak of Hamlin.
And we haven’t even mentioned Charlotte ditching the Roval, North Wilkesboro Speedway hosting a regular-season Cup race for the first time since 1996, or Homestead-Miami Speedway returning to its old spot at the end of the season, albeit temporarily. Or that the Xfinity Series is now the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Or that Connor Zilisch is moving up to Cup and swapping numbers with new Trackhouse Racing teammate Shane van Gisbergen, replacing Daniel Suarez, who moves over to Spire Motorsports. There’s also going to be a boost in horsepower at 20 of the 38 Cup races, mostly short tracks and road courses. And speaking of road courses, June will bring a 16-turn, 3.4-mile event at San Diego’s Naval Base Coronado, with racecars weaving between aircraft carrier docks and fighter jet tarmacs.
All of this while another garage generational shift begins to feel imminent. Hamlin, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, even Joey Logano — all future NASCAR Hall of Famers — are way closer to the end of their careers than the beginning. Meanwhile, two-time defending Daytona 500 winner William Byron has yet to reach 30. Zilisch is 19!
It’s a lot to keep track of, but thankfully, it mostly involves the track itself. Not ill-advised texts. Not billable hours. Not screaming matches over gimmicky points systems nor committee meetings to discuss whether or not to overhaul those systems.
Jim France, NASCAR chairman and the uncomfortable face of the sanctioning body’s side of the antitrust fight, said it best in December, as he stood beside Jordan, who had just dunked on France in court behind them like France was a thick-thighed center caught flatfooted on a court elsewhere.
Said France, the man who hates speaking in public, but now speaking on behalf of the entire NASCAR public: “We can get back to focusing on what we really love. And that’s racing.”
No one knows how good that racing will be in 2026. Honestly, as we all descend upon the World Center of Racing in the coming days, it doesn’t feel like anyone cares. They’re just ready to get on with any racing at all, restless to tap into that “happiest place on the planet” sensation with the hope of feeling clean again, even if only for that first lap.
Is NASCAR back? That’s a big question and one we won’t be able to begin to answer until nine months from now, at least. But NASCAR racing is indeed back, under somewhat new management and with a significantly new title format.
A green flag washcloth reset button that couldn’t get here fast enough.
