You can look at NASCAR’s inaugural in-season tournament two ways.
It’s either a total misfire after the idiotic decision to have it start with a superspeedway race at EchoPark Speedway (aka Atlanta Motor Speedway; I will not use the new name. It’s dumb).
Or, it’s one of the coolest things ever.
I’m actually going to go with a hidden third option.
It was a great idea and it was incredibly shortsighted to start it on a superspeedway.
However, that baffling scheduling decision has given us one of the coolest storylines of the 2025 season.
Because who in their right mind would have believed we’d be here today talking about a final four with Ty Dillon?
This is the same Ty Dillon who hasn’t won a NASCAR race since the 2014 Xfinity Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the first NASCAR race I ever covered as a journalist.
This is the Ty Dillon who only has eight top-10 finishes in 265 Cup Series starts, and six of them were on superspeedways (including an eighth-place finish in the Atlanta race last month).
This is the Ty Dillon who, after losing his ride with Germain Racing following the 2020 season, has spent the last five years bouncing back and forth between all three national series, including three full-time seasons in Cup with three different teams.
And he’s been open about his struggles, like when he “quit” in 2021.
Now, seemingly for the first time in a long time, things have broken his way on the track.
Put another way, he’s finally the beneficiary of the phrase “shit happens.”
It hasn’t been completely blind luck (what else can you call advancing out of the second round three laps into the Chicago street race when his opponent, Brad Keselowski, wrecked out?).
He’s legitimately making noise with the opportunity he’s been given.
While it wasn’t comparable to some of the more famous bump-and-runs, having a shot at $1 million is the only reason the Kaulig Racing driver moved Alex Bowman out of the way on the last lap at Sonoma Raceway for 10th place.
He understood the assignment.
When it comes to the final four — which also includes 12 seed John Hunter Nemechek, 23-seed Tyler Reddick (who I picked to win the whole thing) and sixth-seed Ty Gibbs — there shouldn’t be any bitter feelings that more top seeds didn’t make it.
If this was the final four of the NCAA basketball tournament (with more applicable seedings like a 16 seed instead of a 32 seed), it would probably be held up as one of the coolest final four runs ever.
Also, remember this.
It’s harmless and (likely) won’t affect the natural flow of the season (unless somehow one of the four boots another out of the way on the last lap at Dover Motor Speedway to win the race).
The tournament is meant add some spice to the summer doldrums of the season.
Thankfully, despite the carnage at Atlanta, we’re getting some.
And let Dillon enjoy his magic moment.
Every racecar driver deserves to have one.
Daniel McFadin is a 10-year veteran of the NASCAR media corp. He wrote for NBC Sports from 2015 to October 2020. He currently works full time for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is lead reporter and an editor for Frontstretch. He is also host of the NASCAR podcast "Dropping the Hammer with Daniel McFadin" presented by Democrat-Gazette.
You can email him at danielmcfadin@gmail.com.