5 Points to Ponder: The Most Interesting NASCAR Question Won’t be Answered Until 2027

1. All We Can Do is Wonder If the Field is Catching Up to SVG on Road Courses

Here’s a true and unsurprising statement: Shane van Gisbergen won the NASCAR Cup Series race at Sonoma Raceway this past Sunday (June 28). The reason for the lack of astonishment is that he won at Sonoma last year, has seven road course victories in the last 18 months and has been almost unbeatable any time Cup cars have to turn left and right.

But Sonoma offered some signs that maybe the rest of the garage will be able to challenge him more regularly. Chase Briscoe certainly had a shot to win, and Ty Gibbs may have too had his team not played what turned out to be the incorrect pit strategy.

Van Gisbergen vs. the world on road courses is the most compelling track-specific storyline in NASCAR right now, the kind of narrative that have movie studios cranking out sequels as fast as humanly possible. In this case, though, we won’t know if this was a one-off blip or a trend until next spring.

NASCAR’s decision to squash all of the 2026 road and street course races into the first five months of the schedule is the culprit. Over the past few years, we’d have Watkins Glen International and another road circuit or two still to come, but this year, nada.

(As an aside, and even though purists will strenuously disagree, there absolutely should be a road course in The Chase. It’s not outrageous at all to think a Cup Series champion should have to perform on road courses to clinch the crown, and one out of 10 races is a perfectly acceptable ratio.)

When you watch van Gisbergen do his thing, it often appears he’s pushing just hard enough to win and has something extra in the tank if needed to hold off pursuers. It’s unfortunate that we won’t know if that’s true for about eight months.

2. Tyler Reddick’s Points Lead is Gone, Perhaps Never to Return

It’s not like Denny Hamlin lit things up at Sonoma this past Sunday, as he finished 26th and was one of the last six cars on the lead lap at the end. It’s just that it was on a day when Tyler Reddick ended up dead last, which was enough, barely, to elevate Hamlin to a single-point lead atop the Cup Series standings.

In truth, signs have been pointing this way for about two months with Reddick cooling off after his incredible start to the season nabbed him five wins by mid-April, while Hamlin was nearly as hot during May and the first half of June.

Back-to-back road/street courses chilled both drivers a bit, and Chicagoland Speedway is a big question mark having been off the Cup slate for several years. If there’s a race to watch, it’s EchoPark Speedway in Atlanta, as Reddick won there in February while Hamlin managed only 13th.

If Reddick rekindles his previous form, it’s game on. If not, it’s fair to wonder if momentum has swung in Hamlin’s favor in ways that will ensure Reddick doesn’t regain his spot atop the series for the rest of 2026.

3. Rubbing Really Can Be Just Racing, Even When Carson Hocevar Is Involved

One of the reasons that Hamlin didn’t do better at Sonoma is that he was involved in an incident where he was turned around by Carson Hocevar. The timing was somewhat ironic considering that Kyle Larson just called Hocevar out for his continued aggression just a few days prior.

Given that backdrop and Hocevar’s prior reputation, the knee-jerk reaction was to blame him for what happened. Interestingly, if you watch the replay, it doesn’t look like it was his fault:

Short breakdown of Denny Hamlin spinning off the bumper of Carson Hocevar and what led to it

Looked like the biggest factor was contact from Brad Keselowski (who may also have gotten a shot from Alex Bowman) that shoved Hocevar forward into Hamlin. There's a bit of daylight… pic.twitter.com/P2zMwiYhaB

— Steven Taranto (@STaranto92) June 28, 2026

Here’s the thing: Maybe Hocevar still needs to learn when to back off a tad and maybe he doesn’t. Yet even if the former is true, there are going to be times when it’s just a racing deal and he happens to be one of the drivers involved. That realization requires a level of nuance NASCAR discourse doesn’t always have, so I’ll be curious to see what happens the next time Hocevar and one of the sport’s top stars get tangled up on the track.

4. The No. 1 Seed in the In-Season Challenge Went Down for the 2nd Straight Year

As part of NASCAR’s media bubble, the In-Season Challenge is something that’s just impossible for me to determine if it’s making any headway with fans. My impression is that not that many people care about it, but that’s strictly a vibes thing, and I have absolutely no data to back that up.

Switching to my own sports fan hat, I find the concept fascinating. One reason is that the No. 1 seed (Reddick) lost to the No. 32 seed (Alex Bowman) in the first round, the second time that’s happened in the Challenge’s two years of existence.

If any other sport seeded its top 32 teams or athletes for a similar tournament, you know how many times that would happen? Most likely zero.

It’s chaos, which is fun. It might actually be too much chaos, just because there are so many variables outside your control in NASCAR.

NASCAR may find the Challenge isn’t worth continuing in a few years, and if that happens, so be it. A lack of unpredictability won’t be the reason if it fails to gain long-term traction, that’s for sure.

5. We’ve Found the Poster Boy for The Chase

I’m stealing this gimmick from Bill Barnwell of ESPN, and probably other big-time sports writers as well, so thanks to them.

Going by these stats alone, which driver do you think is in The Chase field as of today:

• Driver A: 0 wins, 2 top fives, 4 top 10s, 3 DNFs, 160 laps led
• Driver B: 0 wins, 0 top fives, 3 top 10s, 3 DNFs, 31 laps led

Fun bonus hint: These drivers are teammates.

If you got the answer without consulting the standings, congrats. Driver A is Brad Keselowski, who is outside The Chase field looking in right now. Driver B is Ryan Preece, who’s not only in the top 16, he’s not even last among that group (albeit only one point clear of 16th-place Austin Cindric).

Let me preface where I’m going with this by saying I don’t feel strongly about the playoffs vs. Chase debate. They’re very different ways of determining a champion that are both fine in my mind. If pressed about it, I’d say I’d slightly lean toward The Chase just because of situations like last year’s NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship, which went to someone other than the driver who clearly dominated the series most of 2025.

Preece is having a decent season and has been very consistent except for a four-race swoon between Charlotte Motor Speedway and Pocono Raceway. Is he having a better campaign than last year through the same number of races?

Not really. By this time in 2025, Preece had one top five and seven top 10s. He’s done marginally better at avoiding races where he finished 25th or worse at seven in 2025 to six in 2025.

For that he would be rewarded with a chance to compete for a championship if The Chase started today. And that just seems wild to me.

‘Win and you’re in’ wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, which is understandable. So far, doing away with that hasn’t mattered, because Preece isn’t ahead of anyone with a race win.

Considering drivers like Keselowski, Joey Logano and Ross Chastain are below him, that could change before the end of the regular season. I can’t help thinking back to last season’s discussion about whether van Gisbergen’s five road course wins made him a ‘deserving’ title contender considering his weakness on ovals.

Preece is the precise flip side of that argument. He’s won no races and really not threatened to do so. He’s much more consistent than 2025 van Gisbergen but it’s hard for me to say that he’s done enough to potentially be the champion, even if he comes on like gangbusters during The Chase.

In any case, if there’s an embodiment of what this system rewards that’s different than the playoff system, right now it’s Preece.