NASCAR Cup Series

The NASCAR Cup Series is a motorsport championship regulated by NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing), which is held in United States since 1949. In the 1990s it became the most popular motorsport event in the country, displacing the single-seaters that had been divided into the defunct series CART and the current IndyCar Series.

History
The boom in alcohol smuggling that occurred between 1928 and 1945 by the Prohibition in North Carolina, created a group of drivers experts in fleeing from the police and taking part in competitions to test their escape skills. This later became an organized championship. The most prestigious race is the Daytona 500, held at Daytona International Speedway, which replaced the Daytona Beach and Road Course. Other traditional circuits are Darlington,  Talladega,  Charlotte and  Bristol.

The cars used (stock cars) used to be street models without mechanical modifications. Over the decades, the regulations were modified to increase benefits and reduce injuries in crashes. Throughout the 2007 season the Car of Tomorrow was introduced, which has identical bodywork for all brands.

In 2004, a championship format called Chase for the Cup ("Chase for the Cup") was implemented, by which ten dates from the end of the cup are chosen the best-ranked drivers (initially ten, since 2007 twelve ), from where they start tied at 5,000 points (since 2007, plus 10 additional points for each victory obtained in the first 26 races). The rest of the drivers are out of the fight for the title, but continue to compete on each date. The scoring scale was modified in 2011, from 46-42-41-40-39 points for the first five to 1 point for the last, and two of the 12 places in the Chase for the Cup were awarded to the drivers with the most victories.

In 2014 the format of the Chase for the Cup was modified again. The number of participants in the Chase was increased from 12 to 16 drivers, to which the 15 drivers with the highest number of victories in the first 26 races, plus the driver, will classify. with more points in the general table. The Chase for the Cup features three preliminary rounds of three races each. Four drivers are eliminated in each round, until four drivers advance to the final race, where the driver who arrives first is enshrined as champion. In each round the points are equalized again, to 2000 in the first, 3000 in the second and third, plus the "playoff" points harvested, except for the last round, where they are equal to 5000. In addition, the winner of each race automatically advances to the next round. In 2017, the name of the Chase was changed to the Cup, and it was renamed NASCAR playoffs.

In 2017, the regular season champion began to be awarded a trophy and an extra fifteen  playoff  points.

Championship denominations
Throughout history, this championship has had up to three different names:


 * NASCAR Strictly Stock (1949)
 * NASCAR Grand National Series (1950-1970) - Not to be confused with the later Busch Grand National Series (nowadays called NASCAR Xfinity Series), of the second division of NASCAR.
 * NASCAR Winston Cup Series (1971-2003) - During this time it was sponsored by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco as an advertising mechanism to attract attention to its Winston cigarette brand. In his later years, the patronage of  R.J. Reynolds Tobacco  has become highly controversial due to the increasing restriction of tobacco advertising by the  United States legislation.
 * NASCAR Nextel Cup Series (2004-2007)
 * NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (2008-2016) - Sprint purchased Nextel in 2007.
 * Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (2017-2019) - After Sprint sponsorship ended after the 2016 season, the NASCAR Cup is sponsored by Monster Energy beginning in 2017. Their sponsorship ended at the end of the 2019 season, renamed the NASCAR Cup Series, without a sponsor, in 2020.
 * NASCAR Cup Series (2020-present)

Television
Beginning in 1960, the most prestigious races of the NASCAR Cup were broadcast delayed, in particular on ABC's "Wide World of Sports," CBS's "CBS Sports Spectacular," and Car & Track. In 1971 a full run aired on ABC for the first time.

CBS aired the first live race in 1979, the 1979 Daytona 500, in which drivers Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison fist each other after colliding with each other.

In the 1980s, the circuits negotiated issues with different national channels. All races were filmed in 1985, and virtually all were broadcast live in 1989.

NASCAR decided to centralize television contracts, so between 2001 and 2006 Fox Broadcasting Company aired the first half of the championship and the second half was broadcast on NBC and TNT In 2007, ESPN and ABC replaced NBC. Starting in 2015, NBC replaces Turner, ESPN and ABC to broadcast the second half of the championship, while Fox continues to broadcast the first half.

Recent circuits

 * Georgia (United States) Atlanta (1960-present)
 * Tennessee Bristol (1961-present)
 * Tennessee Nashville (2021-present)
 * North Carolina Charlotte (mixed track) (2018-present)
 * North Carolina Charlotte (oval) (1960-present)
 * Illinois Chicagoland (2001-2019)
 * South Carolina Darlington (1950-present)
 * Florida Daytona (1959-present)
 * Delaware Dover (1969-present)
 * California Fontana (1997-present)
 * Florida Homestead (1999-present)
 * Indiana Indianapolis (1994-present)


 * Wisconsin Road America (1956, 2021-present)
 * Kansas Kansas (2001-present)
 * Kentucky Kentucky (2011-2020)
 * Nevada Las Vegas (1998-present)
 * Virginia Martinsville (1949-present)
 * Michigan Michigan (1969-present)
 * Tennessee Fairgrounds (1958-1984)
 * New Hampshire New Hampshire (1993-present)
 * North Carolina North Wilkesboro (1949-1996)
 * California Ontario (1971-1972, 1974-1980)
 * Arizona Phoenix (1988-present)


 * Pennsylvania Pocono (1974-present)
 * Virginia Richmond (1953, 1955, 1959-present)
 * California Riverside (1958, 1961, 1963-1988)
 * North Carolina Rockingham (1965-2004)
 * California Sonoma (1989-present)
 * Alabama Talladega (1969-present)
 * Texas Texas - College Station (1969, 1971-1973, 1979-1981)
 * Texas COTA (2021-present)
 * New York Watkins Glen International (1957, 1964-1965, 1986-present)



Regular Season Champions
In 2017, NASCAR began awarding the regular season champion, awarding him a trophy and 15 bonus points for the "playoffs."

Statistics
Updated September 13, 2020, post-Richmond race.

Drivers with the most victories

 * = NASCAR Cup Champion

Teams with more titles
In bold, the teams currently competing in the NASCAR Cup Series

Notes

In 1960 Rex White won the championship by racing a car that he owned, but by not creating his own team as such, there is no organization that wins the team championship.

In 1961 and 1965 Ned Jarrett, who raced for B.G. Holloway and Bondy Long but without belonging to an organization as such, so that the name of the owner of the car appears in that of the team winner but not in the ranking of teams with the most titles as it is not a team as such. Similarly, Carl Kierkhaefer appears as the 1956 and 1955 team title winner since he was the owner of the cars that Buck Baker and Tim Flock drove. This also happens in the years 1949, 1950 and 1952, with the car owners Raymond Parks, Julian Buesink and Tod Chester, and their drivers Red Byron, Bill Rexford and Tim Flock, respectively.