{"id":459927,"date":"2026-02-07T15:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T15:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/459927\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T15:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T15:16:08","slug":"nascar-changes-the-rules-for-its-latest-gimmick-and-we-dont-mean-the-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/459927\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR changes the rules for its latest gimmick, and we don&#8217;t mean the playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-0\" class=\"mt-[18px] md:mt-0 mb-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"82\">In 2025, NASCAR introduced a five-week In-Season Challenge, featuring 32 drivers set up in a bracket-style format with head-to-head matchups each race before ultimately crowning a &#8220;champion&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"85\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/dailydownforce.com\/nascar-scraps-overly-complicated-in-season-challenge-seeding-format\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">rules for that event have changed<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"88\">In 2025, the top 32 drivers in the point standings following the race at Nashville Superspeedway were locked into the tournament. The seeding was then determined by each driver&#8217;s best finish (tiebreaker being second best finish, then third best finish) over the next three races at Michigan International Speedway, Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, and Pocono Raceway.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"8b\">The tournament then began at Atlanta Motor Speedway and also included the races at the Chicago Street Course, Sonoma Raceway, Dover Motor Speedway, and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n<p>This time around, seeding is set to be based strictly on the point standings.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-5\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"8h\">The top 32 drivers in the standings following the season&#8217;s 16th points race at Pocono Raceway on Sunday, June 14 are set to be locked into their seeds according to their position in the standings.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"8k\">The following weekend&#8217;s race at the new Coronado Street Course will not have any impact on tournament seeding. The tournament is then set to begin one weekend later at Sonoma Raceway.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-7\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"8n\">Additional In-Season Challenge tracks are set to include Chicagoland Speedway, EchoPark (Atlanta) Speedway, North Wilkesboro Speedway, and Indianapolis Motor Speedway. All tournament races are <a href=\"https:\/\/beyondtheflag.com\/new-nascar-announcers-confirmed-amid-mid-season-broadcast-shakeup\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">once again set to be shown live on TNT Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-8\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"8q\"><a href=\"https:\/\/beyondtheflag.com\/joe-gibbs-racing-driver-claims-nascar-first-ever-21st-place-trophy-01k16yhgyz0h\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The 2025 championship came down to Ty Dillon and Ty Gibbs<\/a>, two drivers who still have a combined zero Cup Series victories to their name. Gibbs was crowned champion with a 21st place finish at Indy, and neither driver made the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-9\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"8t\"><a href=\"https:\/\/beyondtheflag.com\/chevrolet-top-nascar-driver-think-verge-greatness-01k0jw9d5wym\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dillon&#8217;s Cinderella run<\/a> came despite the fact that he posted just one finish higher than 17th throughout the entire tournament, illustrating just how &#8220;random&#8221; and volatile things can (and generally do) get when you start talking about having head-to-head driver matchups, especially at tracks that lend themselves to chaos.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-10\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"8w\">At the end of the day, the In-Season Challenge doesn&#8217;t actually affect the championship (aside from the obvious points implications from each race), but it definitely remains one of the more gimmicky recent additions to the sport.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-12\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"92\">At least this year, tournament seeding is actually based on more than a three-race sample size, and the tournament won&#8217;t begin on a superspeedway, which effectively rendered seeding meaningless a year ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2025, NASCAR introduced a five-week In-Season Challenge, featuring 32 drivers set up in a bracket-style format with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-459927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}