This week, the NASCAR Cup Series visits the fabled Brickyard for one of the biggest on-track battles to ever enliven the sport.
Through all its historic moments, filled with misnamed memories like the ‘pass in the grass’ (great rhyming, bad recognition of the truth) or colliding forces like Cale Yarborough, Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Wallace, Jeff Gordon, nothing will compare to the much-hyped and immensely vital dogfight between Tys.
That’s right. This Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, head down to the big track to watch Ty Gibbs go door to door with Ty Dillon in a confrontation that will make your ass sweat and your eyes bulge. It’s going to be EPIC! Or something like that.
The NASCAR In-Season Challenge started with high hopes with the belief that a mid-season tournament idea would keep fan interest up during the summer months. Putting 32 drivers into a bracket-style elimination with half the competitors eliminated after each race in a five-race gauntlet seemed like a decent idea. Key word being seemed.
Things started off well with the winner of the first race at Atlanta, Chase Elliott, making it through to the second round of the challenge. But then a curious thing happened. Shane van Gisbergen won the next two races at Chicago and Sonoma Raceway, respectively.
His wins came after he had driven to victory in Mexico City, two weeks before the challenge began. The awesome part of this story is that van Gisbergen did not make the cut for the challenge. What exactly the criteria were for making the cut is something I’m not going to bother to look up because I can’t be bothered because the whole challenge idea has been arbitrary to start.
But if you’re not going to include a recent race-winner in the discussion, then it is difficult to understand how fans are supposed to make sense of the whole thing anyway.
So the driver who won two races during the challenge didn’t make the cut and therefore could not advance, which makes sense. Then Denny Hamlin won at Dover Motor Speedway, but he had already been eliminated, so that means that all three drivers who won during the challenge failed to make the championship round. OK, that’s the thing with a bracket, sometimes a team/driver get hot and go on a roll and sneaks by, and that’s how you have a No. 12 seed making the NCAA basketball tournament such an enjoyable yet short-lived story.
This story, however, has Ty Gibbs playing against Ty Dillon in a drive-off between two drivers who have checks notes never won a Cup race.
Even better…
For Gibbs, making the championship looks like a respectable result of fortune and excellent results. Finishes of 14th, 2nd, 7th and 5th kept him in good standing and played well enough to outlast those in his bracket. Decent enough.
For Dillon, the results do not look like a driver performing at an optimal level. His finishes of 8th, 20th, 17th and 20th, obviously showcase a driver on a hot streak who will soon be taking over in the Playoffs and has the potential to make the championship – kidding.
His run to the challenge purse looks like the definition of a fluke. Surely, this kind of matchup between these two is exactly what the marketing arm of NASCAR had in mind. Why hope for Kyle Larson versus Hamlin or bon amis Elliott versus Ryan Blaney when you can have Ty v Ty.
No, thank you.
I’ll pass on the filet mignon for some charred beef chuck. Mmmm, tasty.
So now that the battle royale is set and fans can get ready for what is sure to be a bumper to bumper fight contested over 400 miles at Indy, then we can discuss what they’re fighting for. Tell ‘em, Jim.
Well, even the $1 million purse wound up being something of a goof. Rather than the money going to the driver, as previously thought, it will go to:
a) The driver and team
b) Back to NASCAR for NASCAR’s continuing lawsuit with 23XI and Front Row Motorsports
c) The winning driver’s owner (also known as Papaw or some grandfather derivative).
Aww, if you guessed C, you’re a true friend of the sport.
The whole deal seems even more peculiar.
Logically, it is a little weird to be a fan who is hoping for a millionaire driver to win $1 million in the first place. But knowing that the tournament, apologies, In-Season Challenge prize goes back to a certified millionaire seems even more empty.
What is it exactly that fans are supposed to be rooting for?
If the goal of this so-called tournament was to keep eyes focused on the sport, it may have, but with an outcome not expected. The fact that the Discovery organization dedicated a challenge solely to the in-season challenge shows the desire and dedication for a hopeful result.
But one of the best things about sport is the outcomes can be predicted but never known. (Unless it’s wrestling, right?)
As a writer and editor, Ava anchors the Formula 1 coverage for the site, while working through many of its biggest columns. Ava earned a Masters in Sports Studies at UGA and a PhD in American Studies from UH-Mānoa. Her dissertation Chased Women, NASCAR Dads, and Southern Inhospitality: How NASCAR Exports The South is in the process of becoming a book.