How the 2026 Most Popular Driver award works, why the eight-time winner took his name off the ballot, and the remarkable 2001 precedent behind the gesture
What we know
- Chase Elliott, the eight-time reigning NASCAR Cup Series Most Popular Driver, has removed his name from consideration for the 2026 award, NASCAR and the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) announced on Friday, October 23, 2026.
- Elliott’s move is a tribute to the late Kyle Busch, who remains on the ballot and is eligible to win the award posthumously.
- Fan voting opened at 9 a.m. ET on Friday, October 23, and closes at noon ET on Monday, November 9 — the day after the Cup Series season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
- The winner will be announced Tuesday, November 10, at the NASCAR Awards banquet in Miami.
What we don’t know
- Whether Busch will actually win the fan vote — no official voting totals are released during the balloting period.
- Whether other drivers will follow Elliott’s lead and withdraw their names as a show of solidarity.
- Whether Elliott will return to the ballot in future years.
On Friday morning, the most predictable outcome of NASCAR’s awards season became official: Chase Elliott will not win the 2026 Most Popular Driver Award. Not because his fans abandoned him — but because he asked them to vote for someone else.
The National Motorsports Press Association announced that voting for the 2026 honor had opened — without the eight-time reigning winner on the ballot. Elliott, the driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, formally removed his name from consideration in honor of the late Kyle Busch, NASCAR confirmed in its official announcement on October 23.
Busch remains on the ballot and is eligible to win the award posthumously, according to NASCAR’s announcement. And if you know the history of this particular award, you already understand the weight of what Elliott just did.
The gesture and why it matters
Elliott didn’t ambush anyone with this decision. He said exactly what he planned to do back in May, shortly after Busch’s death.
“I would be in extreme favor of Kyle winning the vote. I think that he’s a guy that certainly poured a lot of his life into this sport,” Elliott said at the time, as reported by American Cars and Racing. “Although he might’ve been getting boos a lot of weeks, he also had a lot of fans, and a lot of really passionate fans.”
That last line is the key to understanding Kyle Busch. For most of his career, Busch was the sport’s most effective villain — the driver fans loved to boo on driver introductions and then paid money to watch race. But as the years piled on and the wins accumulated, the boos gradually mixed with something else: respect. Busch “poured a lot of his life into this sport,” as Elliott put it, and that has a way of converting skeptics.
When the ballots opened Friday, Busch was listed among the 35 Cup Series drivers eligible for the award, and Elliott’s name was conspicuously absent.
How the Most Popular Driver vote actually works
The award is the only major NASCAR honor decided entirely by fans, which is precisely why it carries the emotional weight it does.
Here’s the mechanics, per NASCAR’s announcement and Jayski’s coverage:
- Who’s eligible: Every driver who declared for NASCAR Cup Series points and was eligible for championship contention during the 2026 season. That’s why Busch — who competed this season before his death — qualifies.
- How to vote: Fans can vote at NASCAR.com/mostpopulardriver or on the NASCAR Mobile App. Each ballot allows one driver per submission, and fans are limited to five submissions per day, per email address. Those five daily votes don’t have to go to a single driver.
- Perks: Fan Rewards members earn 25 points on their first vote from the Rewards dashboard.
- Other series: Fans can also cast votes for Most Popular Driver in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and the Craftsman Truck Series.
- The timeline: Polls are open from 9 a.m. ET on Friday, October 23, until noon ET on Monday, November 9 — the day after the Cup Series season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The winner will be revealed Tuesday, November 10, at the NASCAR Awards banquet in Miami after Championship Weekend.
- History: The award was first presented to Curtis Turner in 1949 after NASCAR’s inaugural Strictly Stock season, and it has been administered by the NMPA and presented annually since 1983.
That eligibility rule — declared for Cup points and eligible for championship contention — is the technical reason Busch can win. The fan-vote rule is the reason he almost certainly will.
The remarkable precedent: 2001
Chase Elliott’s gesture isn’t original. That’s precisely what makes it so powerful — it’s a family tradition.
Elliott’s father, NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, holds the record with 16 Most Popular Driver awards (1984–88, 1991–2000, and 2002). But the 2001 award belongs to Dale Earnhardt, who was killed in a crash on the final lap of the Daytona 500 that February.
After Earnhardt’s death, Bill Elliott — then the reigning winner — pulled his own name from contention. At the end of the season, Earnhardt was posthumously awarded Most Popular Driver. The symmetry is impossible to miss: a father honoring a fallen legend in 2001, his son honoring another in 2026.
The award has been dominated by two families for decades. Dale Earnhardt Jr. won it 15 consecutive times from 2003 to 2017, right up until his retirement from full-time competition. Chase Elliott first won it in 2018 — the year after Earnhardt Jr. stepped away — and had won it every year since, eight straight.
That unbroken run of Elliott/Earnhardt dominance stretches back to 2003, interrupted only by that extraordinary 2001 posthumous award. Now the streak of the present ends the same way the streak of the past paused: a driver stepping aside so the fans can say goodbye properly.
What happens next
The voting window is unusually long — about two and a half weeks — and it’s designed to let momentum build. In 2001, fan sentiment crystallized around Earnhardt quickly. The question now is whether the 2026 electorate follows the same script.
A few things working in Busch’s favor: the gesture of the reigning winner explicitly asking fans to redirect their votes is unprecedented in the award’s modern history. Elliott’s fan base — the largest and most organized in the sport — has already signaled, per fan reactions quoted by The Spun, that it understands the assignment. “It would truly be a shock if Busch doesn’t win this award,” wrote The Spun’s Chris Rosvoglou.
A few things that could complicate the narrative: other drivers on the 35-driver ballot have their own devoted followings, and nothing in the rules prevents any of them from mounting their own campaigns. There’s also an open question — raised by fans on social media — of whether other drivers will withdraw their names so the award goes to Busch unanimously, which one fan suggested would be the equivalent of the drivers themselves voting.
Either way, the voting mechanics give this story a long tail: ballots close November 9, and the winner is announced at the NASCAR Awards banquet in Miami on November 10. That gives this narrative more than two weeks of runway — and every interview, every fan campaign, every driver’s social media post about the vote will feed it.
Why this story keeps winning attention
There are awards in sports that measure excellence, and then there are awards that measure love. The Most Popular Driver award is firmly in the second category, and it’s the only one of its kind in major American motorsports.
Think about what that means. The drivers don’t vote. The media doesn’t vote. The sanctioning body doesn’t vote. Every year since 1983, the NMPA has handed this decision to the people in the grandstands, and every year the people have answered with overwhelming clarity about who they feel connected to.
That’s why Elliott’s withdrawal lands differently than a simple PR gesture. He’s the most popular driver in the sport right now — eight consecutive titles don’t happen by accident. By taking his name off the ballot, he’s effectively transferring that accumulated goodwill to someone who can’t campaign for it himself. It’s the kind of move that only works if the sport’s fans understand the assignment instantly.
They do. The reaction across fan communities, as reported by The Spun, was immediate and approving: “Chase Elliott is a class act,” one fan declared. “So much respect for Chase Elliott for this,” commented another.
The bottom line
Strip away the mechanics and the timeline, and this is a simple story about respect in a sport that runs on it. Chase Elliott spent eight years becoming NASCAR’s most popular driver. He is spending this one making sure someone else gets to be.
Voting is open now through November 9 at NASCAR.com/mostpopulardriver and on the NASCAR Mobile App — five submissions per day, per email. The winner will be announced November 10 in Miami.
If history is any guide — and with the Elliott family, history usually is — the fans already know what they’re going to do.
More sports coverage: the Connor Hellebuyck trade to the Devils and the Brewers-Rays World Series Game 1.
Sources:
- NASCAR.com — “Chase Elliott opts out of Most Popular Driver; vote now” (Oct 23, 2026): https://www.nascar.com/news-media/2026/10/23/elliott-opts-out-of-nmpa-most-popular-driver-consideration-voting-opens/
- Jayski — “Voting now open for the 2026 NMPA NASCAR Most Popular Driver” (Oct 23, 2026): https://www.jayski.com/2026/10/23/voting-now-open-for-the-2026-nmpa-nascar-most-popular-driver/
- Heavy — “NASCAR Driver Drops Out of Most Popular Driver Vote in Honor of Kyle Busch” (Oct 23, 2026): https://heavy.com/sports/nascar/nascar-cup-series-driver-drops-out-of-most-popular-driver-vote-in-honor-of-kyle-busch/
- On3 — “Chase Elliott withdraws from NASCAR Most Popular Driver ballot to honor Kyle Busch” (Oct 23, 2026): https://www.on3.com/nascar/news/chase-elliott-withdraws-from-nascar-most-popular-driver-ballot-to-honor-kyle-busch/
- The Spun — “Class Act: Chase Elliott Honors Kyle Busch With Most Popular Driver Decision” (Oct 23, 2026): https://thespun.com/nascar/chase-elliott-honors-kyle-busch-by-withdrawing-from-most-popular-driver-award
- American Cars and Racing — “Chase Elliott Drops Out Of NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver Competition To Honor Kyle Busch” (Oct 23, 2026): https://americancarsandracing.com/2026/10/23/chase-elliott-drops-out-nascars-most-popular-driver-competition-kyle-busch/
- RacingNews.co — “Chase Elliott removes himself from the ballot of Most Popular Driver” (Oct 23, 2026): https://racingnews.co/2026/10/23/chase-elliott-removes-himself-from-the-ballot-of-most-popular-driver/
