Who… should you be talking about after the checkered flag?
NASCAR’s return to Chicagoland Speedway after a seven-year absence posed a challenge for many drivers who had never raced the track in Cup competition while the veterans still had to figure out how the track would race with the Next Gen car.
Denny Hamlin, who had one win in 14 previous starts at the track, grabbed the pole and led five times for a total of 30 laps, but as the track cooled in the evening, he didn’t have the speed to chase the win.
The setting sun also proved to be the undoing of William Byron, who won both of the first two stages and led a race-high 94 laps. Byron battled fiercely with Chase Briscoe in the second half, but faded in the closing laps, allowing a fast-closing Christopher Bell and Hamlin to get by.
Once he had the lead for the last time, Briscoe was able to drive away from Byron, but teammate Bell was the biggest threat. Bell posted laps as much as a half-second faster than Briscoe, easily vanquishing Hamlin and Byron to run down the lead as Briscoe battled lapped traffic, but time ran out before Bell could make a move on his teammate for the win.
Briscoe won the eero 400 by .276 car lengths over Bell. It’s his first win of 2026 and the sixth of his career. He led three times for 51 total laps.
On the other hand…
Tyler Reddick’s freefall continued on Sunday. After surrendering the points lead last week at Sonoma Raceway, Reddick qualified 13th in his first Cup start at Chicagoland. He had speed and was able to gain some spots, finishing 10th in the first stage before the bottom fell out — literally.
Reddick hit a piece of debris on the track, puncturing his radiator and causing the No. 45 to belch oil and water down the length of pit road and into his garage stall.
The team replaced the radiator and got Reddick back on track to scrounge for every point he could earn, but the damage was done. He finished 30 laps down in 36th, his third straight finish of 25th or worse and second 36th-place result in a row.
Reddick and his team can obviously run up front and win races, but they need to find some mojo to avoid rolling into The Chase on a low note.
What… is the big question everyone should be asking after the race?
NASCAR’s return to Chicagoland wasn’t a return to the Chicago area, just a change of venue after a three-year stint on a street course through the city.
But will NASCAR stick to the oval? Or could the street course make a return?
The oval seems most likely; the street course is logistically challenging as it closes off city streets, making some businesses all but inaccessible, and the Next Gen car prefers the intermediate ovals.
On the other hand, it’s likely that Naval Base Coronado was a one-and-done — it’s an even bigger logistical issue on an active military base, and NASCAR seems determined to host a street race, a la IndyCar.
The third possibility is that there’s room for two in the Chicago area, so it depends on how badly NASCAR wants to explore a different market and how badly Chicago wants a race back in the city proper.
Where… did he come from?
Reddick had his issues, but his 23XI Racing teammates had themselves a day. Bubba Wallace was fast on Saturday, posting the fastest lap of the race on lap 90, and backed it up with a sixth-place result.
But he wasn’t the only one. Rookie Corey Heim, who won two weeks ago in San Diego and isn’t even in his first full season, worked his way forward from a 28th-place start to finish ninth on his birthday, and Riley Herbst finished just one spot behind Heim to put three 23XI cars in the top 10.
Heim will be full-time with 23XI next year, and he’s making a case for himself as a Chase contender in his first full year. Herbst, meanwhile, will move on. He’s shown marked improvement this year and is setting himself up for a more certain future with his recent results.
When… are we going to talk about the points?
The biggest change at the top of the standings was Hamlin increasing his point lead to 44 over Reddick as Reddick’s woes continued. Reddick has scored four points in his last two races. He had speed on Sunday, but his luck has not been what it was earlier in the year, when he looked incapable of a bad finish.
The biggest gain of the week was Briscoe, who moved up to eighth from 11th after his win.
Meanwhile, at the Chase cut line, things are heating up. Wallace remained in 13th, but he’s now 77 points ahead of 17th. Shane van Gisbergen stayed in 14th as well, losing six points to 17th. Austin Cindric moved into 15th and Erik Jones made it back into the top 16 while Ryan Preece fell to 17th, though he’s just four points behind Jones.
With his 12th-place finish, Joey Logano gained two spots to 18th and is within shouting distance of the Chase field, just 16 points behind Jones. AJ Allmendinger is also still eyeballing 16th from 16 points back and is one of the most consistent drivers at EchoPark Speedway. 20th-place Brad Keselowski is just three points behind Allmendinger and Logano.
Consistency has been an issue for just about everyone from Wallace on back, which makes the final Chase spots anything but wrapped up.
Why… should you be paying attention this week?
Well, because there are just seven races to go before The Chase — and this week’s race is a huge wild card.
The Cup Series headlines a tripleheader weekend at EchoPark Speedway (also known as Atlanta). Since it was reconfigured into a mini-superspeedway ahead of the 2022 season, the racing has generally reflected that. Not only does the track equalize the field somewhat and allow the speedway specialists to shine, but it also sees its share of the Big One. Call it Daytona Lite, but it poses a challenge in a stretch of races where every point matters, and it’s easier to lose a lot of them than to gain them back.
Four drivers share the active win lead in Atlanta with two apiece: Logano, Keselowski, Chase Elliott and Byron. Cross Keselowski off that list, however, on the reconfigured speedway; he has not won since the update. Logano, Elliott and Byron’s wins at the speedway have all come on the superspeedway layout.
Elliott is the only driver to have a top-10 average in the nine races since 2022. Carson Hocevar (10.2) and Ryan Blaney (10.8) are next on the list, not surprising given their superspeedway reputations. Fourth on the average finish charts is a bit of a surprise: road-course ace Allmendinger has a very respectable 11.4 average.
The key to maximizing points is, of course, making it to the end in the best position possible and picking up a few stage points on the day. Because of the unpredictability of the tight pack of cars, finishing becomes even more vital, and more difficult. Someone could very well point to this race and the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway as the reason they made The Chase — or missed it.
How… did this race stack up?
What worked at Chicagoland was what works fairly consistently on intermediate tracks these days: the Next Gen car.
The current car is at its best on the intermediates, a far cry from the previous generations of Cup car that put on better shows on short tracks and road courses. With that in mind, NASCAR put the track back on the schedule, and, for the most part, it delivered. Drivers were able to run each other down if they had a faster car. The track changed significantly over the course of the race. Pit timing mattered.
Unfortunately, so did clean air. To be fair, that’s not going to change because well, physics. But the Cup race fell a little flat compared to the O’Reilly Series race on Saturday. That’s become the norm lately; the NOAPS car races better than the Cup car just about everywhere, to the point where it begs the question of why the Cup Series doesn’t move to a car more similar to that series.
The NOAPS drivers also have a little more to prove and they race like it. Many Cup drivers aren’t racing for their careers any more, and that element of fear is good for the racing and still very much present in the NOAPS and Craftsman Truck Series.
All in all, the Cup Series return to Chicagoland wasn’t particularly triumphant; there was nothing really special about the race, which was good but not great. Bell ran Briscoe down but wasn’t able to complete the pass once he got there. It was … just OK. What NASCAR should be paying attention to is the NOAPS putting on the best show of every weekend, and because it races the same tracks almost every week, it really shows.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.
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