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The Nextel Cup Championship is awarded to the driver in NASCAR that has accumulated the most points over a period of 36 races. The "Chase" was begun in 2004 to add a playoff format to the Championship and is currently the last ten races of the season. The winner is award the Nextel Cup trophy designed by Tiffany & Co., and is a pair of silver waving checkered flags.

After Matt Kenseth won the NASCAR Championship in 2003, NASCAR took a serious look at the point formatting. Kenseth had won only one race that year, although he had consistently placed at the front of the pack. Drivers and fans alike wanted the Championship to go to the driver with the most wins, and NASCAR heard their cries and changed the Championship to have a playoff format.

The next year some changes were already in place with NASCAR giving an additional 5 points to the driver that won the race. Bonus points would be awarded to the driver that had led the most laps of the race. But the biggest change came when NASCAR announced that the top ten drivers, or the drivers within 400 points of the leader after 26 races would qualify for the "Chase" dually named.

The points were reset, with tenth receiving 5000 points, ninth 5005 points, and eighth 5010 points and so on to the leader. This closed the gap and the remaining races were still run with 43 drivers in the same format and with the same points being awarded at each race, however, only the top ten were able to win the Championship. NASCAR made sure to this by starting the points out mathematically unobtainable.

That year Kurt Busch came out as a winner, but NASCAR knew they needed to do some tweaking to the Chase.

Fast forward three years and still NASCAR is altering the points system. This year 5 more points were added to the points a driver would receive for a victory. Twelve instead of ten drivers were to compete in the Chase-largely due to the fact that Fan Favorite Tony Stewart missed out on the Chase the previous year by few points. Also, during the last 10 races, Tony won more races and accumulated more points than the Championship winner, so understandably NASCAR wished to open the field more.

Since there had never been anyone within 400 points of the leader, NASCAR dropped that rule. This time the points were to be reset by wins accumulated during the regular season. With ten points for each win added to the awarded 5000 points. This however, wiped clean the large lead Jeff Gordon had held and reduced him to second place.

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