Following an electric Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, only one NASCAR Cup Series race remains before the 32-driver field is set for the inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge.
Upon the conclusion of this Sunday’s Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway (7 p.m. ET, Prime Video, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the 32-driver grid will be cemented, and with it, the pool vying for the $1 million prize. As such, a handful of drivers will look to the 1.33-mile Tennessee facility as one final opportunity to show enough speed and savvy strategy to clinch a coveted berth.
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Similarly to last week, four drivers in particular — Brad Keselowski, Shane van Gisbergen, Riley Herbst and Cole Custer — are the immediate contenders in play for the 32nd and final challenge spot. However, compared to the week prior, a new driver among the quartet currently holds onto that final position.
Following a fifth-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600, Keselowski’s No. 6 RFK Racing Ford now sits 32nd in the driver standings, taking the position from Herbst, who held it going into the race weekend. Of the quartet, Keselowski’s fifth-place result was the highest, with van Gisbergen (14th), Custer (21st) and Herbst (28th) rounding out the order of Charlotte finishes. With these results, van Gisbergen trails Keselowski by 19 points in 33rd, with Herbst one point behind the No. 88 Trackhouse Racing pilot for 34th. Custer rounds out the four, sitting five points behind Herbst in 35th.
Enter Nashville, where all four drivers will look to find just enough speed to pull away from their competitors and clinch an In-Season Challenge berth. The playing field will be relatively even, given the four drivers haven’t found success — or, in some cases, experience — at the track in NASCAR’s premier series.
Of the four, Keselowski holds the most Cup Series starts at Nashville, with four to his name. However, none of the four starts have yielded a top-10 finish. In fact, in only one of those four races did Keselowski finish inside the top 20 (11th in 2023). Custer, meanwhile, has two Cup starts at the Tennessee track, which came in 2021-22 as a member of Stewart-Haas Racing. Despite starting seventh in 2021 and 17th in 2022, Custer finished both races outside the top 25, placing 30th in 2021 and 26th in 2022. Custer’s Nashville luck fared better in the Xfinity Series, where, in two starts spanning 2023-24, he finished ninth both times and started on the pole in 2023.
While Herbst possesses no Cup experience at Nashville, he, too, has compiled Xfinity reps, finishing inside the top 10 in all four career starts there, with a 2022 pole position to boot. Van Gisbergen, on the other hand, carries no Cup experience at Nashville and only one start in Xfinity action there, tallying a 15th-place finish in 2024.
In other words, experience is, collectively, relatively light when speaking about the quartet and Nashville in the same sentence, which in turn should create plenty of intrigue as they — and perhaps additional dark horses — contend for In-Season Challenge positioning.
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The NASCAR In-Season Challenge will consist of five races, beginning on June 28 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Following Atlanta, the challenge will move to the Chicago Street Course on July 6, then to Sonoma Raceway on July 13, Dover Motor Speedway on July 20 and conclude at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the annual Brickyard 400 on July 27. The winner will receive a $1 million prize.
The seeding for the 32-driver bracket will be determined by the results of the final three races aired on Prime Video before the challenge begins (Michigan, Mexico City, Pocono). Drivers will be seeded based on their best finish in the three races, with tiebreakers determined by the next-best finish, followed by the season points position.
Throughout the challenge, drivers will compete head-to-head in a bracket-style competition, with the highest-finishing driver in each matchup advancing to the next round. The field will be narrowed down from 32 drivers in the opening race to 16 in the second, eight in the third, four in the fourth, and finally, two drivers battling for the challenge win in the fifth and final contest at The Brickyard.