1. Popular Brickyard 400 Victory? Check
There’s always something cool about a driver breaking a long winless streak. Not all parts of sports at their highest level are relatable to the average fan, but struggling and persevering until success is finally found again is a universal theme.
When the redemption takes place at a high profile race like the Brickyard 400, so much the better. And when it’s a driver who is well liked by his fellow competitors, that’s pretty much the entire package.
It’s hard to argue that last point after watching Bubba Wallace win for the first time in 100 starts — well over two full seasons — at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was only natural to see Ryan Blaney drive beside Wallace to congratulate him since they’re longtime friends. Same goes for Chase Elliott.
But if you stayed tuned in past the checkered flag at Indy, you saw many more drivers pay their respects, regardless of manufacturer, age, or any other way you’d classify them. This was a guy other drivers were happy to see win if they couldn’t claim this victory for themselves.
As expected, Wallace showed a ton of emotion after his triumph. He’s one of the most publicly self-critical members of the NASCAR Cup Series garage, regardless of how his wife and young child have mellowed him (and they certainly seem to have done that).
His reactions were a heady mix of joy, relief and fatigue. But the response from other drivers and the fans on hand were much more distilled and genuine happiness. NASCAR isn’t the only sport where you see that happen, but it’s probably the one where you see the best examples, and Bubba’s Brickyard triumph was right up there with any of them.
2. The In-Season Challenge Didn’t Finish Quite as Memorably
The other big winner at Indy was Ty Gibbs, who claimed the crown and the $1 million (for his team, anyway) as the winner of the In-Season Challenge. Not bad when you can win a big prize for finishing 21st, but that’s always a possibility in a format where you are head-to-head with one other driver.
(That would be Ty Dillon, whose Cinderella run ended in 28th.)
So the Challenge ended with a whimper instead of a bang, but was it a success? That depends on what measuring stick you’re using.
The summer tournament did shine a spotlight on drivers who weren’t always running up front or likely championship contenders, something that NASCAR and its broadcast partners aren’t always great at doing. It couldn’t have hurt TNT, who carried all five Challenge races even if it didn’t seem to know how much promotion was the right amount from week to week.
Everything else was either a miss or an outright debacle. Starting the tournament with the chaos of Atlanta made a mockery of the NCAA Tournament-style brackets that NASCAR surely wanted to be a bigger deal. There was basically zero star power left by the end, and then the trophy was at stake between two cars running outside the top 20.
Should the inaugural In-Season Challenge also be the only one? Or would some tweaks save it for at least one more run in 2026? Those are questions sure to be debated with some intensity by the people who govern the sport before the year ends.
3. Were We Really Close to Ending the NASCAR Playoffs After 2025?
Speaking of things that could use either tweaks or go away, the NASCAR playoffs continue to be a hot topic. The internal discourse here at Frontstretch mirrors what I imagine it looks like among any group of people who care about the sport: Fixes are thrown out with varying degrees of feasibility until some spoilsport comes around and says, “yeah but the playoffs will never go away because TV wants them around.”
Perhaps there’s more to that than just cynicism. On the latest episode of The Teardown podcast, The Athletic‘s Jeff Gluck shared some insight into NASCAR’s playoff committee: a group of “30 to 40 people” that spans present and past drivers, media members and team owners.
According to Gluck, the committee has met several times in 2025 and there was enough sentiment about changing the championship format that he was “90% sure” that something would happen for 2026. Now? Gluck thinks there is only a 20% chance.
And yes, the culprit is the obvious one, as he explained that, “TV wants a playoff. They want eliminations.” They in this case is NBC, who is paying millions of dollars a year through the 2031 season with the expectation that it would be showing playoff races.
This is one of those situations where ignorance may have been at least partial bliss. Nothing is likely to be different next year because NASCAR is so close to releasing the 2026 schedule. Beyond that, we’ll have to wait and see, but for those hoping to see the end of the current playoff system, the boogeyman looks exactly like we suspected.
4. At Least the Regular Season Championship Race is Close
The Cup Series regular season championship matters. Numbers back up that assertion, as only twice since stage racing became a thing has the regular season champ failed to make the Championship 4 (Kevin Harvick in 2020 and Martin Truex Jr. in 2023, with a h/t to my colleague Landon Quesinberry for that info).
That means the drivers with a shot at taking that honor this year will want to secure it if at all possible, and with four races left before the playoffs, the battle is tight. Elliott leads the way, but William Byron is just four points behind him, with both Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin within 20 points.
All four drivers are already in the playoff field, so the automatic berth that comes with finishing first doesn’t mean much. What would is the extra 15 playoff points, and where those end up could swing the postseason considerably. Larson and Hamlin would separate themselves from each other, for example, and Elliott arguably needs them the most since he has only six total playoff points at the moment.
It’s not quite all to play for, like they say in English soccer, but there’s plenty at stake at the top of the points list over the next month, and that’s never a bad thing.
5. The Speedway Classic Should Be Must-See TV
We don’t always talk racing here. Sometimes we talk other things that happen at racetracks, and one of the most interesting events to fit that description is coming up this Saturday (Aug. 2) at Bristol Motor Speedway when it hosts the MLB Speedway Classic.
Maybe you’ve never thought to yourself, “wow it would be awesome if they played a baseball game at Bristol,” but it actually does look like it will be an amazing atmosphere. Not only is the sight of a baseball diamond in the middle of the iconic track fantastic on its own, but the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds have sweet racing-inspired uniforms for the occasion, and the crowd is set to be a record for an MLB game.
Even if baseball isn’t usually your thing, this might be worth checking out just for a different kind of spectacle at a venue you may already know well. The Speedway Classic will air live on FOX beginning at 7 p.m. ET on Saturday.
