NASCAR set for summer stretch March
Madness style. Will new tournament end summer schedule malaise?
[June 24, 2025]
By DAN GELSTON
LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — It’s time to bust out the brackets, pick an
upset or two, and follow winners on the road — a journey over city
streets, concrete and bricks — to the final four and beyond.
Totally awesome, baby?
Forget all the upset specials in March.
NASCAR will find out soon enough if its attempt to snap out of a
mid-summer malaise with its first in-season tournament is a success
with drivers and fans as it strives to boost engagement and build
buzz in the staid regular season.
The concept has already juiced enthusiasm in NASCAR to levels not
seen since the halcyon days when Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough
duked it out in the 1979 Daytona 500.
“To be really honest with you,” 2020 NASCAR champion Chase Elliott
said, “I have not paid any attention to it.”
Maybe a look at the matchup will get NASCAR’s most popular driver
pumped!
Elliott is seeded fifth against No. 28 seed Austin Dillon in the
first round of the head-to-head showdown in the race-within-the-race
set for this weekend at the track better known as Atlanta Motor
Speedway.
Here’s a refresher for Elliott and any other sports fan who missed
out on the specifics of NASCAR joining the in-season tournament
party, much like attempts in the NBA, NHL, and, of course,
throughout the world in soccer.
NASCAR is set to start the engines on a five-race, bracket-style
tournament called the In-Season Challenge in the midst of the summer
slate, which comes with a $1 million prize to the winner.
The final 32-driver field was set by results of the last three races
at Michigan, Mexico City and Pocono. The drivers are paired in
head-to-head matchups based on seeding, with the winners advancing
to the next round in a bracket format that mirrors the NCAA
basketball tournaments.
Buoyed by a win at Michigan and a runner-up finish at Pocono, Denny
Hamlin earned the top seed. He’ll square off — race off? — against
No. 32 seed Ty Dillon. Pocono winner Chase Briscoe is the No. 2 seed
and is pitted against No. 31 seed Noah Gragson.
Chris Buescher is third, Christopher Bell fourth and Elliott fifth,
among notable names.
The format is single elimination with the field cut to 16 at the
street race in Chicago, eight at Sonoma, four on the lone concrete
track in the series at Dover and the final two over the yard of
bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The Challenge is part of NASCAR’s media rights deal that includes
TNT, and the Atlanta-based cable network will broadcast all five
races in the tournament, starting with the 400-miler in Atlanta.
Aside from a shrug from Elliott and a few others, drivers are
intrigued by the idea of increasing the stakes in each race beyond a
playoff berth, trophy and the winner’s purse.
“I love it. I think it’s great,” three-time Cup champion Joey Logano
said. “I think it’s placed perfectly where it is in the season. This
is kind of that moment where the newness is worn off. We’re into the
rhythm, we’re racing every week. It’s starting to start a little bit
of, who’s going to be in the playoffs, who’s not, the cutoff line
all those types of things. But it’s not really the main story quite
yet.”
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Chris Buescher walks to his car before a NASCAR Cup Series auto race
at Hermanos Rodríguez race track in Mexico City, Sunday, June 15,
2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
Stories are what sell, of course, and the sizzle in
Pocono over the weekend had little to do with which drivers or teams
are the ones to beat for the 2025 championship. Rather, it was
whether two pedestrian drivers were going to fight, the end of
Amazon Prime's run of wildly-popular telecasts and Hall of Fame
driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s win in his first race as a crew chief.
“This really spices up the mid-part of the season,” Logano said.
So does placing a few bucks on No. 11 to win.
But as of Monday afternoon, most sports gambling sites did not offer
odds on specific matchups headed into Atlanta. NASCAR is offering $1
million to a winning fan with a perfect bracket in its fantasy game.
There are some quirks to the bracket: Shane van Gisbergen won the
Cup race in Mexico City and is not in the field while series points
leader William Byron is only a No. 9 seed. The tournament boasts
matchups in the first-round of past Cup champions (Kyle Busch-Brad
Keselowski), former teammates (Briscoe-Gragson), and even best
friends (Bubba Wallace-Daniel Suarez).
The idea for the challenge was largely championed by Hamlin, a
three-time Daytona 500 champion who floated the idea of a mid-season
tournament on his “Actions Detrimental" podcast. When NASCAR bought
into the idea and announced the creation of the tournament last
year, Hamlin called the tournament on social media “such a win for
our sport and drivers.” He jokingly added, “I will collect my 1M
royalty next season.”
Hamlin's on deck and clearly a favorite to win it all, with three
wins this year for Joe Gibbs Racing and the top seed.
(And let's not haggle over who gets credit in court.)
“I’m a sports guy, so I’m going to be engaged with it," Hamlin said.
"I’ll know who I will have to beat next week. I’ve told the team, we
are going to try and do what we can. We are going to be up against
it because we are going to tracks that aren’t very favorable to me.
But we are going to try to do our best to beat that one car for the
next four to five weeks.”
NASCAR will present the tournament winner at Indianapolis with a
ring, jackets, trophy and — oh yeah, a million bucks.
That's enough cash to get anyone's attention — even Elliott's.
“I don't know what you get. You get anything,” Elliott asked.
“Oh, a million dollars to the winner? Then yeah, we want to win.”
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