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Preview: Round 1 of the 2026 In-Season Challenge at Sonoma Raceway

Nathan Solomon

Meg Oliphant | Getty Images

Year 2 of the In-Season Challenge kicks off Sunday when the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series head to the winding hills of Sonoma Raceway (3:30 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Commencing this year's five-week, head-to-head bracket battle at a road course is a change from last year, when the inaugural In-Season Challenge kicked off at the EchoPark Speedway drafting track. A superspeedway-like race as the opener busted some early brackets with eight Round 1 upsets, but ultimately, Ty Gibbs emerged after a month of high-stakes battles to take the 2025 crown. A road course for this year's Round 1 race will certainly bring some different names into the fold, but will likely end up more predictable than EchoPark. Here's what to keep an eye on for this weekend in Wine Country. RELATED: Fill out your bracket now! | In-Season Challenge hub ROUND 1 MATCHUPS: TRACK BREAKDOWN Shane van Gisbergen (who we'll get to later) is an obvious favorite anytime the Cup Series goes road course racing, but several other drivers have stout Sonoma records. No. 9 seed Chase Elliott has never won in Northern California, but has seven top 10s in nine starts at the 1.99-mile road course. No. 7 seed Chris Buescher has top fives in three of the last four races at the 10-turn circuit, and both Elliott and Buescher have favorable matchups. No. 6 seed Kyle Larson is the only active driver with multiple Sonoma wins, with his most recent coming in 2024. He uncharacteristically finished 35th there last year, but showed his best road course pace in quite some time last weekend in San Diego. His matchup with Riley Herbst is also favorable, but the No. 35 23XI Racing team has made big gains over the last several months. No. 8 seed Daniel Suárez is also a Sonoma winner and has beaten Todd Gilliland, his Round 1 opponent, in three of the last four trips there. No. 20 seed Michael McDowell owns the best average finish in the Next Gen car at Sonoma among drivers with multiple starts at 4.0. He'll face Bubba Wallace, who finished second last weekend at Naval Base Coronado in his best career road course race. On paper, McDowell is a favorite as his 5.67 average finish in three road course events this year is tops in Cup, but Wallace surely won't go down easily. MATCHUP OF THE WEEK: (No. 9) Carson Hocevar vs. (No. 24) Zane Smith Two of NASCAR's brightest young stars are pitted against each other in Round 1. Both Hocevar and Smith are enjoying career years in their third full-time Cup bouts, and both led laps and contended last weekend at Naval Base Coronado. Hocevar sits ninth in points and has speed seemingly everywhere, and Smith has especially broken out over the last two months with three top 10s in the last five races. Smith crashed inside the top 10 at both Michigan and Pocono, but this stretch proves that his Front Row Motorsports speed can contend with the highly touted Spire Motorsports. Oh yeah, they have history, too. Last summer at Iowa Speedway, Hocevar crashed into Smith, prompting Ryan Bergenty, Smith's crew chief, to confront Hocevar post-race. In an interview with NASCAR.com a week later, Smith said, "I personally can’t go have a conversation with him without getting a $75,000 fine ... he’s just a dumb [expletive]." So two drivers that most definitely don't like each other racing straight up over 110 laps? That could create fireworks. Neither driver has finished better than 16th at Sonoma, but with both on upward trajectories, it's certainly possible that both of these budding stars could find themselves in contention for the win. [caption id="attachment_516559" align="aligncenter" width="1300"]Getty Images[/caption] KEY MATCHUP: (No. 14) Shane van Gisbergen vs. (No. 19) Ryan Preece After how Naval Base Coronado played out, this matchup got a lot more interesting. At the end of the day, van Gisbergen still has seven road course victories in 15 starts, including six of the last eight. But San Diego -- and even Circuit of The Americas for that matter -- showed that the No. 97 Trackhouse Racing driver isn't invincible. Alternatively, Preece ran arguably his best race of the season in Coronado, finishing 11th and earning 19 of 20 possible stage points. He's finished no worse than 18th in three road course races in 2026 and finally has some momentum on his side after a miserable four-week stretch between Charlotte and Pocono. Preece is generally known for finishing consistently and maximizing his car, so if SVG has another misstep, the RFK Racing driver can pounce and bust brackets. (And yes, Preece is having plenty of fun about this matchup on X.) KEY MATCHUP: (No. 16) Austin Cindric vs. (No. 17) Brad Keselowski The most recent drivers of Team Penske's famed No. 2 car will face off in a matchup that could go either way. Neither driver has fared particularly well at Sonoma, with Cindric earning one top five in four starts and Keselowski just one top five in 15 starts. Cindric, however, has a road course racing background and won on lefts and rights five times in the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series. He also has a top 10 this season at Watkins Glen International. But widening the scope, Cindric and Keselowski sit squarely around the Chase cutoff line. Cindric is 15th in points and has been above the provisional cut for seven of the last eight races, while the RFK Racing driver/owner has plummeted from ninth to 19th since Watkins Glen. Postseason pressure is ramping up, and both of these drivers need strong weekends -- which could potentially start a deep In-Season Challenge run for one of them. UPSET WATCH: (No. 10) Christopher Bell The Norman, Oklahoma, native is a three-time road-course winner, but Bell's injury status jeopardizes his chances of advancing out of Round 1. After suffering a fractured left wrist in a crash at Michigan International Speedway, Bell received clearance to race at Pocono Raceway, but exited his Toyota early last weekend at Naval Base Coronado. Eighteen-year-old Brent Crews took over at the first caution before a mechanical failure ended the team's day early in San Diego. So will a similar driver swap procedure be in order at Sonoma? Regardless, Bell's facing Ross Chastain in the opener, who's stout on the road in his own right. The Trackhouse Racing driver's first Cup win came at Circuit of The Americas in 2022, and he is riding the most momentum he's had all season with consecutive top-10 finishes. Chastain owns an average finish of 11.5 in the Next Gen car, fourth best among active drivers at the track. With so many unknowns for the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team this weekend, it's hard to bank on Bell advancing.