No one has ever driven a Delorean in a NASCAR event, but NASCAR is going Back to the Future.

On Monday, NASCAR president Steve O’Donnell, sitting alongside hall of famers Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr., announced a long-anticipated overhaul of the manner in which stock car racing’s top series will determine its champion. There will still be a 26-race “regular season,” and after that final event, the 16 top drivers in the points standings will still be separated from the rest to begin a ten-race postseason that will crown a champion.

But gone is win-and-in, when a racer was essentially guaranteed a postseason berth just by winning one race. Gone are elimination rounds. Gone is any official “stick-and-ball” style bracket. Gone are playoff points and what had become an over-abundance of additional math.

The only arithmetic required now is to add up points earned during races (winners now receive 55 points versus 40, and stage points still exist). Whoever has the most when the checkered flag flies over Homestead-Miami Speedway in November will hoist the big silver Cup.

In other words, it is essentially a return to the way that NASCAR champions were crowned from 2004 through 2013, the pre-Playoff era, known as the Chase. Fittingly, two of the three current drivers who also shared the stage are named Chase: Chase Elliott and Chase Briscoe.

It was Elliott who said that it was appealing that now a champion would “come out in the wash” rewarded for a yearlong effort, as opposed to being determined by the roulette wheel of the final race, four-driver, highest-finisher-wins format that might erase a year’s worth of work. It certainly did that to Denny Hamlin in the 2025 finale, who led the series in wins and dominated the season finale race until a late caution at Phoenix undid it all.

“We all grew up on this,” Ryan Blaney said of himself and the Chases when it comes to the Chase. “It just feels right.”

It also feels cleaner. Simpler. Largely gimmick free. It passes the elevator test. You can explain it to a friend during a lift to your hotel room instead of needing an entire dinner and a calculator. While it isn’t a total rewind to the days of the Winston Cup Series and a 36-race points setup, it also isn’t the seemingly ever-changing Playoff formula that was unapologetically designed in an effort to lure potential new fans from other sports by giving them a familiar format.

What it is, is a compromise.

“Yeah, it won’t be enough for some, but I am so happy,” admitted Martin, who spent the first two decades of his Cup career racing for titles under the 36-race rules, but spent his last decade with the Chase. He finished runner-up in each format. “I wanted it all. But I am still happy.”

It was Martin who long banged a very loud drum on behalf of an old-school 36-race revival. That campaign began during 2025 Daytona 500 weekend, nearly one full year ago. That’s when NASCAR formed an exploratory committee and met in the massive tower that overlooks the World Center of Racing. The group included NASCAR executives, TV network representatives, several current drivers, including Hamlin, as well as representatives from the auto manufacturers and a handful of media members. Full disclosure, I was one of those media members.

In that initial meeting, everyone attended in person with the exception of Earnhardt, who was in the racetrack infield on Zoom, and Martin, who was also joining via video conference, from his home in Arkansas. The meeting was only minutes old when Martin passionately took over the proceedings, speaking from the heart about his conversations at short tracks throughout Midwest with what NASCAR brass have long referred to as “core fans.”

The 40-time race winner said aloud what everyone in the room already knew. It was the reason the committee had been formed in the first place. He said that those core fans felt disconnected because what they watched in NASCAR’s big leagues no longer resembled every other stop along the stock car racing ladder when it came to determining the best of the best.

Martin’s speech set a tone that remained with the effort all the way until its final announcement on Monday. On that day in February, as was recognized by O’Donnell and Martin on Monday, it was a tone that initially hit the committee like a wet loaf of bread. O’Donnell joked during the news conference: “We wanted to throw Mark out of the room.”

However, even as the conversation continued through spring and summer via email and more meetings, as it moved through discussions of subtler changes, such as expanding the championship fight from just the season finale to instead be spread out over the final three of four races, Martin’s voice from that day in February kept echoing. Now, granted, some of that wasn’t an echo. He was also pretty vocal about it all on social media and various NASCAR media outlets.

The momentum Martin continued to create, slowly but surely winning over even those who’d rolled their eyes at his face on the giant projection screens in that first meeting, was the tug toward the other side of line that the new-format conversation needed. A needed tug backward. Not all the way into NASCAR’s past, but certainly in that direction. If nothing else, Martin’s push resulted in a much-needed feel-good group-hug moment for a sport anxious to emerge from perhaps its ugliest offseason, punctuated by a contentious antitrust lawsuit and the resignation of commissioner Steve Phelps, the fallout of text messages revealed around that suit.

“I appeal to all race fans, but especially the classic fans, who say to me, ‘I don’t watch anymore,'” Martin said to his people from the stage on Monday. “I say, we need you. Come on back. We’re headed in the right direction … come back and join with us, and we’ll keep making progress.”

“[I want to] challenge the race fans and say, ‘Let’s enjoy what we’ve got,'” Elliott added. “We’re so quick to complain about everything. Everything that we have and everything that we do. Let’s enjoy what we have because we’re making history, whether you like it or not. Celebrate the champion … I think this format promotes that.”

This will not be NASCAR’s final championship format. For 77 years, the sanctioning body has tinkered with its points system more than a crew chief fiddles with his racecar. Richard Petty’s seven championships came via six different points systems, including a five-year stretch when he won four titles with four different points scales. In the end, as The King likes to say, “I just tried to win every week, and if the math worked out at the end, they gave me a big trophy.”

But for now, and for the first time in a long time, the next NASCAR champion will earn their crown by sticking to that very plan. By indeed going Back to the Future.

The Boston Celtics fell two possessions short in one of their biggest games of the season thus far: a 100-95 loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday. Notable in the defeat was a free-throw discrepancy in which the Spurs made 10 more foul shots (14) than the Celtics even attempted (four). Celtics star Jaylen Brown took exception to the distribution of whistles in the loss and after the game unleashed a minute-and-a-half-long diatribe against the officials.

The NBA responded Monday with a $35,000 fine for public criticism of the officiating. The league cited Brown’s postgame remarks to reporters as well as a social media post in which he said he is “sick of this s—.”

Brown, who scored 27 points but did not go to the charity stripe once, called out official Curtis Blair by name and lamented the “inconsistency” in the amount of contact allowed on the two ends of the floor.

“I’ll accept the fine at this point,” Brown said. “I thought it was some bulls—- tonight. I think they’re a good defensive team, but they ain’t that damn good. I hope somebody could just pull up the clips, because it’s the same s— every time we play a good team. It’s like, they refuse to make a call, and they call touch-fouls on the other end. That’s just extremely frustrating, bro.”

The foul totals were not dramatically out of balance, as Boston was whistled 18 times to San Antonio’s 13. But the majority of the Celtics’ infractions sent the Spurs to the line, and their 20 free-throw attempts were a factor in the game’s outcome. Brown himself was guilty of four fouls, which tied a game-high.

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“We play hard,” Brown said. “We are outplaying our expectations. We compete hard on the defensive end. They reward the other team with touch-fouls, and we go down there and guys are allowed to get away with it. Somebody, please, pull it up. Every time we play a good team the inconsistency is crazy. I’ll take the f—-ing fine. Curtis (Blair), all them dudes, was terrible tonight. I don’t care; they can fine me whatever they want. It’s crazy. Every time we play a good team, it’s the same bulls—. Somebody, please, pull up the clips.”

The loss knocked the Celtics fell to 24-14 with the loss. But even with the defeat, Boston is in a much better position than the vast majority of prognosticators foresaw before the season. Despite the absence of the injured Jayson Tatum and the flurry of offseason moves that sent key contributors out of town, the Celtics are squarely in the race for the East’s top seed.

“I’m irate at how they officiated the game today,” Brown said. “If we can’t get to the free throw line, and teams are allowed to be physical and bump us off our spots, then it’s hard to win games like that. We shot four free throws tonight and lost the game by four. Not to say that’s the whole game, the whole story. We gotta be better in spots. But goddamn, like, I’m driving to the basket, I’m physical, I don’t flop, I don’t shy away from contact, I go up strong, I’m athletic, and nothing. I had zero free throws tonight. The inconsistency is f—ing crazy.”

Brown is in the midst of a career year and is on pace to set a personal best in scoring with his 29.5 points per game. His usage has skyrocketed with Tatum on the shelf, and he leads the NBA with 16.1 2-point attempts per contest.