1. A Win for Ryan Blaney Erases Lots of Misery
If you keep running well and the only thing keeping you from the results you probably deserve is bad luck, eventually things are going to tilt back in your favor.
For Ryan Blaney, that proved true, finally, at Nashville Superspeedway on June 1. Blaney entered the race comparing favorably to just about anyone in terms of top fives, top 10s and laps led. Yet it was that ugly DNF number—five in 13 starts—and the goose egg in the win column that couldn’t help but jump out.
Because of that, there was a moment in Sunday night’s NASCAR Cup Series race when Blaney entered the pits with the lead and came out second that the first thought that came to mind was “welp, here we go again.” Joey Logano was going to get out front on the restart and scoot away to the win while something unfortunate would happen to the No. 12 yet again.
If people were thinking it at home, it had to be going through the minds of the driver and his crew as well.
But not so much this time. Blaney got out front relatively quickly, maneuvered his way through lapped traffic when needed, and there wasn’t much Logano, Carson Hocevar or Denny Hamlin could do.
It seems a little trite to say that the victory washes away the miserable start to 2025, but … doesn’t it? Blaney is now locked into the playoffs, his team knows it can deliver as long as nothing wonky happens, and they finally got a result that matched their performance.
As far as turning the page moments go, this was right up there with anything in recent Cup Series memory.
2. Retaliate Against Carson Hocevar? Might Be Easier Said Than Done
One of the most delightful parts of Amazon Prime Video’s coverage of the Cup Series is the extended post-race show. In addition to segments that humanize the drivers, like Bubba Wallace tearing up when speaking about how becoming a father has made him a better person, there’s plenty of time for insightful viewpoints from Prime’s analysts.
Such was the case after Nashville, when Dale Earnhardt Jr. weighed in on Hocevar, saying he likes the driver as a commentator or fan but isn’t as sure he’d appreciate being in a position like Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was as a competitor. Corey LaJoie followed with his take, noting that Carl Edwards suggested there would be consequences for Hocevar’s actions but that none had materialized yet. In LaJoie’s eyes, all anyone has done so far is fire off angry social media posts.
While LaJoie’s stance is easy to back in theory, the truth is that the historically self-policing nature of the Cup Series garage is much different in 2025 thanks to NASCAR’s increasing tendency to penalize drivers for settling scores. The most prominent example from this season came after the Circuit of the Americas, when Austin Cindric was docked 50 points for turning Ty Dillon on purpose.
The important thing to emphasize here is that the penalty assessed to Cindric was for retaliating. In so many other sports, officials miss an initial infraction but then nail the retaliator for seeking payback. It’s often just not worth it; in hockey, for instance, it’s a boon to any team that can have a depth player goad one of the opponent’s stars into a fight.
That makes the calculus for, say, someone like Stenhouse running Hocevar into the wall trickier than it might first appear. With no wins under his belt and sitting 18th in points (ironically now two markers behind Hocevar), does it make sense for Stenhouse to risk revenge just to prove a point?
Probably not. So, despite how it would appeal to the old school NASCAR mentality, firing off angry X posts is probably the smarter way to go to get any frustration out at Hocever or any other driver who’s offended you at the moment.
Sorry, Corey.
3. No One is Slumping Harder Than Alex Bowman Right Now
Despite entering 2025 with only one Cup Series win in the last two seasons, Alex Bowman had the look of a driver who had found his groove right away. He finished sixth at Daytona International Speedway, and while he came home 26th at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Bowman bounced back quickly to tear through four consecutive top-10 finishes, culminating in a runner-up result at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Though you never quite got the feeling he was threatening to win all those races, he was consistently good. It was, really, quintessential Bowman.
But from Martinsville Speedway on, it’s been a different story. After coming home 36th at Nashville, Bowman has now finished 27th or worse at six of the last eight Cup stops, including four finishes of 35th or lower.
It’s not quite that Bowman has inherited Blaney’s rotten luck, as he’s had only two official DNFs. He is headed the wrong way in the standings, however, and doesn’t have a win to rely on for playoff eligibility in a season when the number of winners has quickly grown.
Put another way, it’s now at least conceivable that Bowman could be on the outside of the postseason looking in if he and his team can’t find their mojo again during the summer, and that would have been silly to think just two months ago.
4. Points Are About to Matter Again … Maybe
It’s almost tournament time! Though it doesn’t feel like NASCAR has done much to promote it, perhaps because its broadcast partners for the early and current parts of the season don’t have a stake in it, the inaugural In-Season Challenge kicks off later this month at Atlanta.
We now know which drivers will be part of the tournament field, as anyone below the top 32 in Cup Series points after Nashville is out. That means better luck next year to Shane van Gisbergen, Cole Custer, Riley Herbst and Cody Ware.
The seeding for the In-Season Challenge will be determined by drivers’ best finishes over the next three races (Michigan International Speedway, Mexico City and Pocono Raceway), but the tiebreaker is points. Will that lead to teams approaching portions of the seeding races differently? Do the Cup Series organizations even care about the In-Season Challenge enough to take things like this into account?
I have no idea what the answers to those two questions are, but if even a few teams decide to approach things differently from their competitors as a result, that alone could make the Challenge a worthwhile experiment.
5. The NASCAR Hall of Fame Will Be Getting a Facelift … Also Maybe
In news that was big enough that even typically non-NASCAR-following outlets like Axios covered it, the NASCAR Hall of Fame is preparing to ask the city of Charlotte for $25 million to “modernize” the building and “bolster its educational offerings and events.”
On one hand, it’s not so crazy for the people running a sports-related facility to want an upgrade after 15 years. That happens with arenas and stadiums all the time.
On the other hand, Axios reminded everyone that the Hall of Fame was constructed with the thought that it would attract 800,000 visitors a year, while in reality, 2024 saw its second-highest attendance to date at just over a quarter of that total.
That said, the Charlotte Observer points out that Charlotte has a hospitality fund powered by several taxes devoted to this very kind of thing, so it’s not like residents will be asked to pony up for the renovations. A vote on the matter will likely take place this summer, so we’ll know relatively soon if the NASCAR Hall of Fame will look shiny and new in the next few years.
