What’s old is new again in NASCAR.

After NASCAR’s Performance Metric was used to set the starting lineup in a record-setting number of races in the NASCAR Cup Series Chase this year, the sanctioning body has gone back to the drawing board and brought back an oldie but a goodie: Owner’s Points.

Beginning (again) in 2027, when NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, or NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series qualifying sessions are cancelled due to inclement weather, the sanctioning body will go back to determining the starting lineup via Owner’s Points, said John Probst of NASCAR.

“I would say that a lot of the work we did on the metric, where we take your finish the week before and add that to your owners position, serves a good purpose for qualifying [order], but I think when we look at it and see how it happened this year, I think we had four of our first six [in the Chase] get rained out for qualifying for something like that, then you really do see the potential unfairness in how it was going to lineup when you did the wet-weather lineup that way,” said John Probst.

“So, what we’re going to do in 2027 is line them up by owner’s points; that’ll make it a little bit easier to explain to our fans. There’s no math involved other than you just look at the points, and that’s how we’ll line them up on Sundays,” he added.

As far as how qualifying is contested in 2027, you might see some changes there, too.

Probst says the qualifying order will likely remain being done by the Performance Metric, but he could see some tweaks like only having one round at superspeedways, but NASCAR is also looking at potentially implementing an All-Star Race-style of qualifying, where there is a pit stop in the middle of the process, to set the lineup for select events in 2027.

However, Probst mentions they’re still working on it with the teams, but it is an idea that they have to liven up the qualifying process.