On June 28, the NASCAR Cup Series kicked off its inaugural, bracket-style in-season tournament at EchoPark Speedway, and boy, did it get off to a wild start.
While a drafting-style track like Atlanta was already going to serve as a wild race to commence the In-Season Challenge, nobody could have guessed how things turned out.
A crash at the end of stage one took out higher-seeded drivers (4) Christopher Bell and (7) Ryan Blaney, allowing their opponents (29) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and (26) Carson Hocevar to move through to the next round at the Chicago street course with ease.
A few laps later on lap 69, a massive crash broke out, collecting what felt like the entire field and knocking out even more top seeds, including the top two, Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe.
Upon the checkered flag, only seven drivers seeded 16th or higher (a.k.a. the top half of the bracket) remain in contention for the $1 million prize to be awarded after the final race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Those drivers are: (3) Chris Buescher; (5) Chase Elliott, who won the race; (6) Ty Gibbs; (8) Alex Bowman and (9) Bubba Wallace, who will face off against each other in the next round; (12) John Hunter Nemechek, Elliott’s new opponent; and (14) Zane Smith, who will face Buescher.
Several underdogs advanced through to the second round, most notably lowest-seeded Ty Dillon, who was able to escape the big wreck that started when his opponent Hamlin got turned sideways in front of the field.
Dillon jokingly took a jab at Hamlin after the race, alluding to one of Hamlin’s all-timer soundbites he’s utilized when winning, most recently at Michigan International Speedway.
“All you Denny fans out there,” Dillon said after the race. “I just knocked your favorite driver out!”
There is now a more-than-favorable chance that a driver with double-digit seeding could walk away with the $1 million, especially with racetracks like the Chicago street course and Sonoma Raceway also on the docket.
Fans who filled out a bracket were certainly left frustrated with the fact that their bracket was busted after the first round — in fact, according to NASCAR, zero perfect brackets remain after the chaos at Atlanta.
It’s understandably frustrating that NASCAR is using some gimmicky, elimination-style format to determine a winner, and now that a lot of the heavy hitters have been eliminated, whoever wins may not truly deserve it as much as someone like a Hamlin, Bell or Blaney.
Hold on, that sounds a little bit familiar.
It sounds like similar arguments people make against the playoff format.
Anyone who has an issue with NASCAR’s In-Season Challenge should also have an issue with NASCAR’s current playoff format. Similarly, if you find nothing wrong with how the In-Season Challenge works, then you should have no issue with NASCAR’s playoff system.
Because let’s face it, they are the same thing. One is just meant to be a fun game that has no effect on the season itself.
The central problem with the In-Season Challenge is the same central problem with the playoffs: luck. You could dominate all throughout the challenge (just like in the playoffs) and have one bad run when it matters and find yourself out of the running.
That’s a problem in and of itself, and now we have two different competitions that institute a survive-and-advance approach to winning it all. Which works for stick-and-ball sports (“oh no, not another stick-and-ball comparison!” I hear you say), but motorsports is a different beast.
The In-Season Challenge is a fun concept and a neat incentive to keep fans invested during the summer months, a time when, historically, viewership naturally drops a little bit. The knockout bracket-style format of the tournament really helps these five races give that March Madness feel to races that otherwise may not be tuned into. Plus, it’s a neat way to promote TNT’s summer series — especially this season, when it’s the network’s first year broadcasting races in 11 years.
The result of this tournament will determine its future in the sport, but if becomes a staple of the Cup schedule (much like the Dash 4 Cash for the NASCAR Xfinity Series or the Triple Truck Challenge for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series), then NASCAR needs to change up the playoff system ASAP (which, to its credit, says it is already exploring for 2026). We can’t have two similar elimination-style competitions for fear of the season getting too repetitive — for the same reason fans were sick of the same schedule for 15 years until its forced 2020 makeover.
But at the same time, one cannot be mad at the system that the In-Season Challenge utilizes and be happy with how NASCAR runs its current playoff format, and vice versa. Though they are different, they are fundamentally the same in how they’re run: survive and advance. You can’t be mad at Shane van Gisbergen for wasting a playoff spot by just playing by the rules but get upset at Dillon for just surviving the chaos at Atlanta when Hamlin couldn’t do the same.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Hopefully, this will signify a change to the playoff format coming soon. We’re knocking people out too much in a single season at this point.
Anthony Damcott joined Frontstretch in March 2022. Currently, he is an editor and co-authors Fire on Fridays (Fridays); he is also the primary Truck Series reporter/writer and serves as an at-track reporter. He has also assisted with short track content and social media, among other duties he takes/has taken on for the site. In 2025, he became an official member of the National Motorsports Press Association. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight coordinator in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.