About NASCAR Cup Series
The NASCAR Cup Series is top-tier of three national touring series in the sport alongside the Xfinity Series and Truck Series. The Cup Series operates with a points system. The driver sitting atop the leaderboard to finish the regular season earns 15 playoff points. The Cup Series playoff features the 16 highest-scoring drivers competing through four rounds. A winning driver and winning owner are annually crowned separately.
The Cup Series season runs from February to November every year. NASCAR relocated its Championship Weekend from Homestead-Miami Speedway, which hosted the event for 18 seasons, to ISM Raceway near Phoenix, Arizona.
Iconic tracks that host Cup Series races include the Charlotte Motor Speedway, Daytona International Speedway, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and Talladega Superspeedway. The Daytona 500 has annually served as the season-opening Cup Series race since 1982.
History of NASCAR Cup Series
The NASCAR Cup Series was founded in 1949 by Bill France Sr. and has undergone several evolutions since. It began as the Strictly Stock Series before switching to the Grand National Series (1950-71), Winston Cup Series (1971-2003), Nextel Cup Series (2004-07), Sprint Cup Series (2008-16) and the Monster Energy Series through the 2019 season.
NASCAR opted against renewing with Monster Energy and instead announced the Cup Series would feature a multilayered sponsorship model in December 2019. Busch Beer, Coca-Cola, GEICO, and Xfinity were named as "premier partners."
The trophy was renamed the Bill France Cup ahead of the 2020 season, the first without a title sponsor since 1971.
Richard Petty is the winningest all-time Cup Series driver with 200. The octogenarian notched his first win in 1960 and his last in 1984. In March 2019, though, Petty was surpassed by Kyle Busch in terms of all-time combined national series wins.
Jimmy Johnson topped the Cup Series from 2006 to 2010, marking the first time one driver had won in consecutive years since Jeff Gordon (1997-98). The late Dale Earnhardt did so on three separate occasions (1986-87, 1990-91 and 1993-94).