NASCAR 2025 In-Season Challenge Tournament Breakdown

Justin Tessier – Shady Sports Network

Table of Contents

1 In-Season Challenge Preview:
2 Tournament Races & Progession
3 In-Season Challenge Post Race Analysis (QuakerState 400/Atlanta):

In-Season Challenge Preview:

An idea that was first conceptualized by current NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin during an episode (over 2 years ago) of his podcast. Hamlin suggested this proposal to NASCAR as a solution to boosting its viewership ratings. The new mid-season bracket-style event has now arrived this year in the NASCAR Cup Series. The In-Season Challenge is born.

He used it as a way of advocating for increased competition between the drivers hopefully creating story-lines, rivalries and jump-starting further fan interest & engagement during the summer months of the season. For the drivers and for NASCAR the potential benefits of the event could be substantial with financial incentives involved and growing their audience to potentially an exponentially much larger demographics, if this challenge does as well as they believe it will do, everybody wins.

https://www.nascar.com/in-season-challenge/

Here is a link to fill out your own NASCAR Cup Series in-season tournament bracket for free if you are up for the challenge.

Tournament Races & Progession

Levels	Race Locations & Dates	Field of Drivers	Race Name
Round 1	EchoPark Speedway (Atlanta) Saturday, June 28th	32	Quaker State 400
Round 2	Chicago Street Course (Chicago) Sunday, July 6th	16	Grant Park 165
Quarterfinals	Sonoma Raceway (California) Sunday, July 13th	8	Toyota/Save Mart 350
Semifinals	Dover Motor Speedway (Delaware) Sunday, July 20th	4	Autotrader Echopark Automotive 400
Championship	Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Indianapolis) Sunday, July 27th	2	Brickyard 400

All Five Races will be aired live on TNT (Also streamed live on Max)
The seeding for the tournament is determined by the best finish of each driver in the three races leading up to the tournament: Michigan, Mexico City, and Pocono
The winner of each head-to-head match-up is determined by the higher finishing position in the designated race.
The tournament is a separate entity from the regular season and playoff points standings, meaning drivers can compete without risking their playoff chances.
The winner of the tournament challenge will be taking home a $1 million prize.

In-Season Challenge Post Race Analysis (QuakerState 400/Atlanta):

The In-Season Challenge kicked off with a bang. Now the round of 32 drivers has come down to 16 after a wild night at Echopark Speedway. Half of the field have been eliminated as of today, and the ones who remain survived a race that nobody could’ve seen coming. For most of those who filled out a bracket before the tournament challenge began had their favorites of the whole competition locked in and certainly primed to advance out of the round of 32, however, one cataclysmic crash put the large field of those brackets right out the window in an instant.

Stage 1 had the Fords dominating the race right out of the pole position with 2 of the 3 drivers from the same team (Team Penske: Logano, Cindric) take the top 2 spots at the end of stage 1 Austin cindric of the #2 car winning it in convincing fashion. With no major cautions impeding the race to begin. Then stage 2 got under way and not long after it did the moment happened, a 23 car wreck with 17 ultimately unable to return(eliminating half the field of drivers) while setting back several other drivers for making a late race comeback to try to salvage the remainder of the race in whatever way that they could.

It was the moment of the race that flipped everything upside down in the in-season tournament challenge bracket for so many, out the chaos a new field of drivers emerged to stake their claim for victory lane, by the end of very close and incredible display of driving only one could be the stage 2 winner that was Tyler Reddick of the Superman paint scheme #45 car edging out Chase Elliott by a mere 0.001 seconds. Truly a photo finish to determine that result, which would play into the foreshadowing of what was to come in the final stage of the race.

Stage 3 began as Stage 2 ended out of a tensely competitive restart, a few drivers came back to take the field recovered as well as they could be from the earlier wreck while by the end of the race a few more fell victim to circumstance trying to make their push to victory lane only to be unable to continue due to car failure. Chase Elliott, in a dramatic finish, passed Brad Keselowski on the final lap to claim the victory.

The race featured 46 lead changes and a close finish, with Elliott winning by 0.168 seconds. So in front of the hometown crowd with the win vaulting him into the playoffs Chase Elliott under the paint scheme of his #9 car designed by Rhealynn Mills, an 11-year old cancer patient at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, making for a heartwarming storyline to what will be remembered as one of the most incredible and iconic races in NASCAR Cup series in recent memory as well as Atlanta speedway history finally snaps his 44 race winless streak and moves on to advance to the next round of the NASCAR Cup Series in-season tournament bracket.

Chase Elliott(left) with Rhealynn Mills(right), following victory.

With the EchoPark Speedway (Atlanta) QuakerState 400 finished and the field of drivers set for the next round of the in-season bracket challenge under way going into the Chicago street course next week, more strategies from these driving teams likely to be reevaluated and the lessons learned from this race taken into great consideration while more will be on the line at the end of next weekends road race. Here is the matchup for each driver going into round 2:

Matchup 1: Brad Keselowski (17) vs. Ty Dillon (32)
Matchup 2: Alex Bowman (8) vs. 9 Bubba Wallace (9)
Matchup 3: Chase Elliott (5) vs. John Hunter Nemechek (12)
Matchup 4: Erik Jones (20) vs. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (29)
Matchup 5: Ryan Preece (15) vs. Noah Gragson (31)
Matchup 6: Tyler Reddick (23) vs. Carson Hocevar (26)
Matchup 7: Ty Gibbs (6) vs. AJ Allmendinger (22)
Matchup 8: Chris Buescher (3) vs. Zane Smith (14)

My final thoughts for this new In-Season Challenge race on Saturday were that of an overall feeling of amazement for how the event went and excitement for all the moments in between during the race that kept me engaged at the edge of my seat the entire time. Its been quite some time since I’ve watched a NASCAR race from start to finish, but this event was made exciting by the wild crash in the opening third of the race to all the battles towards the end of stages and all the lead changes.

The whole field of drivers for the most part always within a few seconds of the lead from one another it so much fun to see, it was simply put great racing that has been missing for the greater parts of this season. Although I understand the fallout from losing half the field of heavily favored and highly competitive drivers but i’ll say of those that survived and remained til the end they more than made up what was lacking of the field and put on one hell of a demonstration of equal part entertainment and sport.

That of which NASCAR, die hard fans and even those who just tuned in for their first ever race viewing can look forward to watching as the remainder of the in-season tournament challenge rolls along.

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