NASCAR NITTRO Modified Series 2026 Season

The 2026 NASCAR NITTRO Series is ready to kick off in March for a season of 15 Modified races! That's right, 15 points-paying Modified races as the All-Star Open will be a full points-paying race for the top 40 in points, set by points and the All Star Race will also be a full points paying race, with the lineup set in reverse of the All-Star Open results. The points system will be the same as the 2025 season, the old Winston Cup points system with the exception that the winner gets 200 points.

Each qualifying session and race will be filmed and uploaded to the HSL Diecast Racing channel. www.youtube.com/channel/UCUpTEvb2EDSxagDrupFg_VA

Rules & restrictions

• Stock and modified entries allowed
• 70g maximum weight
• 3.25in. long x 2in. tall x 1.25in. wide
• No limit to entries per household. If I receive more than 70 mail-in entries, any cars with no points after 4 races are eliminated for the remainder of the season. I will be entering 2 (EDIT: 3 cars), 2 at the request of subscribers who don't build and one for my Karl Wrecko character because he's drawn a lot of positive feedback on other channels. If I receive fewer than 46 mail-in entries, I'll build additional cars to make up the difference to 48.
• Any wheels are allowed.
• Any lube is allowed.
• All NASCAR castings, American muscle cars, "Stocker" cars are allowed, anything that was raced in NASCAR, ARCA, or IROC is allowed. REGULAR CAB 1990s-2000s F150, Silverado, and Ram castings are allowed as they raced in the Truck Series, as are the Stockar, Circle Tracker, Circle Trucker and Draftnator castings.. Each car must have a number on either the hood, doors, roof or any combination thereof.
• The Fox Body Mustang was never raced in NASCAR, ARCA or IROC so it is banned.Also banned is the number 666. Any other 1,2, or 3 digit number can be used and different people can use the same number. Any entries without a driver name will be assigned one from among the NASCAR drivers who used those numbers or a randomly assigned stock character, 

Dates & deadlines

All entries must be received by the host before Friday, 3/27/2026. The Driver Intro photoshoot is and Daytona 500 qualifying is scheduled for Saturday, 3/28/2026. Results will be posted for the final points standings at the end of the season.

How to enter

Send your entries to 

HSL Diecast

PO Box 7

Wind Gap, PA 18091

Contact the tournament host to get my home shipping address for entry if shipping from outside the USA using DHL/FedEx/UPS.

Include at least $10.00 for return shipping if you want your entries back. Entries not getting returned will be used as field fillers in the 2027 season.

Include a Race Entry ID slip with your entry

Track

The track is a hybrid of split track and fat track, mostly Crash Racers track with funnel chutes and the occasional obstacle. Each race the track will be configured differently, except for the Charlotte races and the Daytona Firecracker 400 which makes its return this season There is a "snow track" similar to that of 905 Diecast and Portillo Racing Entertainment that will be used for 1 race this season. This is a typical NASCAR NITTRO Series race track. 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySkx95XvStk

Race format and scoring

The cars will be split into EDIT: 6 segments of 8 cars based on qualifying speeds. Each segment of most races will have 4 laps. Road course races and the All Star Open will have 3 laps per segment, while the Daytona 500, Season Finale, and Southern 500 will have 5 laps per segment and the Coca Cola 600 will have 6.

The winners of each segment will move onto the Main Event, and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th place and so forth, finishers will race against one another in 2-lap segments The winner of those moves on to the next race, as in the winner of the 6ths race will move to the 5ths, and so on. The Main Event is the same number of laps as the race's segment except at Talladega where it will have 5 laps instead of 4. 

The points are as follows; very similar to the Winston Cup points, except quite a bit more incentive for winning races.

1 200
2 175
3 170
4 165
5 160
6 155
7 150
8 146
9 142
10 138
11 134
12 130
13 126
14 122
15 118
16 114
17 110
18 106
19 102
20 100
21 97
22 94
23 91
24 88
25 85
26 82
27 79
28 76
29 73
30 70
31 67
32 64
33 61
34 58
35 55
36 52

37 49

38 46

39 43

40 40

41 37

42 34

43 31

44 28

45 25

46 22

47 19

48 16

Penalties/DNF

Cars that are too wide for the split track will be disqualified for the season.

Cars that arrive damaged will be minimally repaired before filming, and cars that are damaged during a race will be put on the "injured reserve" for 1-2 races as I find time to repair them.

A DNF occurs when a car flips onto its roof or side during the segment racing. It will not advance to the placement races and will be classified based on which lap of the segment racing it DNFs on.

Prizes
Prizes for the champion and runner up will contain treasure hunts, ZAMACs, VW Drag Buses, other premium Hot Wheels castings, and  M2/Greenlight/Johnny Lightning collectibles. The winner will have twice as many cars as the runner-up unless teammates take the 1-2 spots, then the winner gets all of the premium cars. Additionally, mainline Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars will be given out per entry as well as per race win. If somehow one of my own cars wins a race, the 2nd place finisher will get the prize cars.