Saturday’s NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series’ Focused Health 250 at EchoPark Speedway (7 p.m. ET, The CW, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) completes the day’s unique two-venue race doubleheader after an early afternoon NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race on the Lime Rock Park road course in Connecticut.
And judging by the last two series races on Atlanta’s high-banked 1.5-miler, there is every reason to believe the day may end with an exclamation point. First-time race winners have claimed the last two races there. Nick Sanchez won last summer’s contest, and this February, Haas Factory Team’s Sheldon Creed earned his first O’Reilly trophy.
The driver to beat is the home-state favorite: five-time EchoPark winner Austin Hill. A sixth victory this weekend would give the No. 21 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet pilot the all-time mark — breaking a tie with NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Kevin Harvick. Hill’s 11 wins and 925 laps led on drafting tracks are tops in each category.
Jesse Love, Hill’s RCR teammate, is the only driver with top-10 finishes at all the drafting tracks in 2026. The No. 2 RCR Chevrolet driver is ranked second in the driver standings to JR Motorsports’ Justin Allgaier, the season’s most dominating racer. Yet Love is still racing for his first win of the season — the only driver ranked among the top six in the standings without a victory.
The 21-year-old — who announced June 17 he’ll move into the NASCAR Cup Series’ No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford full-time next year — has had three runner-up finishes (Phoenix, Watkins Glen and Charlotte) and led the most laps at Nashville Superspeedway in May, only to finish 16th. He’s on a streak of three straight top-10 results and finished fifth after leading 31 laps at Atlanta in February.
Allgaier’s domination continues to be the storyline for the series. His five wins lead all drivers, but the 2024 series champ has endured a couple of recent “off days” by his standards, with sub-25th-place showings in two of the last three races.
The 2024 O’Reilly champion’s 457 laps led, 12 top fives and 15 top 10s — all best among full timers — have contributed to that unprecedented 195-point lead over Love and the field. That gap is bigger than the points difference from Love to Joe Gibbs Racing’s Brent Crews, who sits 12th in the table.
Hill, Love and Allgaier all expect to be challenged again by the defending race winner Creed, who is looking to gain points after a steady couple of months. He hasn’t led a lap since Talladega Superspeedway in April, but has three top-10 finishes in the last four races.
Only four races remain to set the 12-driver field for The Chase. And although Allgaier has secured a spot in the postseason, there is still a lot of movement possible on the other end of scale. Crews holds a 44-point lead over his JGR teammate William Sawalich for that 12th and final Chase position. Rajah Caruth is 48 points off Crews’ pace.
Qualifying is at 11 a.m. ET on Saturday (The CW App).
The 2026 In-Season Challenge rolls into Round 3 this Sunday when the NASCAR Cup Series visits EchoPark Speedway (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). It’s the first track the series visits for a second time in 2026, and the hybrid superspeedway will almost certainly put on a summer showdown worth remembering for a long time.
Round 2 at Chicagoland Speedway had plenty of excitement, featuring five statistical upsets — including No. 32 seed Alex Bowman advancing into the quarterfinals over No. 16 seed Austin Cindric, as well as No. 25 seed Todd Gilliland defeating No. 9 seed Carson Hocevar. But generally speaking, the cream has risen to the top through two races as Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports each still have three dogs in the hunt with Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney lurking as well.
Coincidentally, three Round 3 matchups feature a pair of cars from powerhouse organizations, while the two Cinderella stories square off in the fourth. When it’s all said and done, three Hendrick cars could make up the semifinals — which would undoubtedly prove the organization is headed in the right direction after a shaky start to 2026.
(No. 2) Denny Hamlin vs. (No. 10) Christopher Bell
(No. 3) Ryan Blaney vs. (No. 11) William Byron
(No. 4) Chase Elliott vs. (No. 12) Chase Briscoe
(No. 25) Todd Gilliland vs. (No. 32) Alex Bowman
TRACK BREAKDOWN
EchoPark Speedway’s reputation as Daytona on steroids has quickly made the Atlanta-area facility one of the hottest tickets in NASCAR. Six different drivers have won in nine races since the pre-2022 reconfiguration, and no driver has won more than twice. It’s the ultimate test between superspeedway prowess and car control, all while hauling wide open at 180 mph on a 1.5-mile track.
Three of the remaining In-Season Challenge drivers have victories at EchoPark, and two of them count as multitime winners. William Byron won the inaugural race in 2022 and picked up another dub the next fall, while Chase Elliott has won a pair of summer races — including last year’s race. Elliott owns the best average finish among all drivers at 9.38, with Ryan Blaney right behind him in third at 10.78. All three drivers rank inside the top seven for most laps led in the Peach State draft.
Shockingly, despite Ford winning the pole for each of the nine races since the reconfiguration, the manufacturer has won just twice, both coming from Joey Logano — who was eliminated in Round 1. Some of that, however, is due to crashes. Per Racing Insights, an average of 25.3 cars are involved in incidents at EchoPark races, and twice the crashed-car count exceeded 30. Certain drivers clearly perform better than others at EchoPark, but it’s still a wild card at the end of the day.
MATCHUP OF THE WEEK: (No. 2) Denny Hamlin vs. (No. 10) Christopher Bell
A pair of Joe Gibbs Racing teammates will square off at EchoPark Speedway with a trip to the semifinals on the line. Both Bell and Hamlin finished on the podium at Chicagoland behind fellow JGR driver Chase Briscoe, each making significant gains in their championship points situations. But with a drafting track on deck, how much will these two shopmates help each other in this high-speed chess match?
Once one of the best in the draft — as evidenced by his three Harley J. Earl trophies for winning the Daytona 500 — Hamlin has struggled at superspeedway-like tracks in the Next Gen car, specifically EchoPark, where he has just two top 10s in nine races since the reconfiguration. Meanwhile, Bell is sneaky good here with three top fives and a last-lap victory in 2025.
But as we’ve learned in years past, anything can happen when the Cup Series visits the Atlanta-area facility. EchoPark served as the In-Season Challenge opener last year and busted brackets with eight Round 1 upsets. And with these two teammates pitted against each other, this could serve as the most significant matchup in the entire tournament. Both drivers are contenders at every oval on the circuit, and Toyota continues to show incredible strength across the board. With North Wilkesboro and Indianapolis to follow, the winner of this head-to-head duel could very well go all the way.
KEY MATCHUP: (No. 3) Ryan Blaney vs. (No. 11) William Byron
This is about as good as it gets with a pair of multitime drafting-track winners squaring off for a spot in the semifinals. Both Blaney and Byron won their first two matchups fairly easily. Blaney’s first two opponents finished outside the top 20 as the Team Penske driver scored a sixth at Sonoma and a seventh at Chicagoland. Byron beat Ricky Stenhouse Jr. by nine spots at the road course, while capitalizing on teammate Kyle Larson’s misfortunes at Chicagoland with a top five and a race-best 94 laps led.
Ford generally has more speed in these types of races, and Penske drivers always seem to work the best in the draft. Blaney has seven top 10s in the last eight EchoPark races, and while Byron has wrecked his last three times in Atlanta, he’s still a two-time Daytona 500 champion. Expect Ford to qualify well on Saturday, which should give Blaney the necessary track position. If he can keep it, Blaney will likely move on to Round 4 — but keep in mind the No. 12 team still ranks outside the top 30 in pit-crew performance.
KEY MATCHUP:(No. 4) Chase Elliott vs. (No. 12) Chase Briscoe
It’s pretty safe to say Chase will win this battle, but which one? Elliott has the numbers to back it up at EchoPark, earning a pair of victories and boasting the aforementioned best average finish at his home track. But Briscoe has all the momentum in the world, as he nearly defeated Shane van Gisbergen at Sonoma before finally ripping the bandage off with a victory last weekend at Chicagoland.
To that point, Briscoe’s record at EchoPark is borderline abysmal. He did finish second this spring, but before that, he had just one top-15 finish since the reconfiguration. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver is improving at drafting tracks, though, as Briscoe banked a Talladega win last fall to make his first Championship 4. However, Elliott’s numbers are far more impressive across the board at these types of tracks, and as one of the Cup Series’ most consistent drivers, he’ll set a high bar that will be difficult to beat. Elliott is the favorite, but in a year dominated by Toyota, anything is possible — especially at this place.
KEY MATCHUP:(No. 25) Todd Gilliland vs. (No. 32) Alex Bowman
Everyone certainly penciled this as a quarterfinal matchup in their brackets, right? This year’s two Cinderellas are on a crash course, and something obviously has to give. Bowman’s on one of his better stretches this season, earning a pair of top-10 finishes at Sonoma and Chicagoland. Gilliland, however, is benefiting from a survive-and-advance mentality. His 29th-place result at Sonoma eked him past No. 9 Daniel Suárez, who suffered an early tire issue at the road course and ran most of the race off the lead strategy. At Chicagoland, Gilliland’s Round 2 rival, Carson Hocevar, got fenced by Zane Smith, and the Spire Motorsports driver could never recover.
As evidenced by his six front-row starting positions for the Daytona 500, Bowman has plenty of speed at drafting tracks. His results don’t necessarily reflect that, but the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team quietly has four top 10s in the draft since the start of 2025. Bowman should be the favorite here.
The stretch run of the Cup Series season is generally Team Penske’s time to shine. Since the 16-driver, elimination-style playoff era began in 2014, the team has tended to produce second-half finishes 9.9% better (by Adjusted Points+ index) than in the first half, and they’re known in particular for turning things up during the postseason itself. Over that same span, only two of the team’s 32 full-time entries — Joey Logano in 2017 and Austin Cindric in 2023 — failed to make the playoffs, and the team won four of a possible 12 championships as well.
So, with the second half of the 2026 Cup Series season officially underway (Round 19 of 36 was this past weekend at Chicagoland), we might expect The Captain’s crew to settle in for another potential championship bid — or at least to send all of its cars to the postseason, as has happened in seven of eight seasons since Penske went to three cars in 2018.
Instead, Team Penske is in a real fight to get as many of its drivers into The Chase as possible. While Ryan Blaney is No. 3 in the standings and ought to have his eye on the championship prize again without worry that he’ll miss The Chase — his place there is practically guaranteed — the team’s other two drivers have a lot to fret about. Austin Cindric ranks 15th in the points, just 27 points clear of Ryan Preece on the wrong side of the cutline, and Joey Logano sits an unthinkably low 18th, trailing Preece by 12 points.
In other words, if the season ended today, one of the Penske drivers not named “Blaney” would barely hang onto a Chase spot, and the other would miss it altogether. If somehow they both missed, it would be the only time a single Team Penske entry made the postseason during its time as a three-car outfit.
In part, Cindric and Logano can point to a down year for the Fords overall. Between Penske, RFK Racing, Front Row Motorsports, Wood Brothers Racing and Carl Long’s Garage 66, Ford has one win (by Blaney in March at Phoenix), seven podiums and 12 top fives — all of which lag behind Toyota in a banner season and Chevrolet (six wins, 19 podiums and 36 top fives, albeit with about 70% more cars in the field each week).
Logano and Cindric have at least been outdriving the other Fords; Logano has a 93-86 head-to-head record (52.0%) against fellow Ford drivers, while Cindric is 91-88 (50.8%). But those are uncharacteristically low numbers for Penske drivers — especially Logano. Since 2014, only five seasons by full-time Penske drivers even saw a head-to-head success rate against fellow Fords below 59.8%, much less hovering around 50%. Meanwhile, Blaney’s 143-36 mark against Fords (79.9%) is the fourth-best for Penske in that era.
Which gets us to the truly unflattering comparison for Cindric and Logano: Blaney’s parallel performance. The No. 12 is 31-7 (81.6%) versus his teammates head-to-head this season, the best mark by one Penske driver against the rest of his team since Brad Keselowski went 33-4 (89.2%) against AJ Allmendinger and Sam Hornish, Jr. in 2012. Certainly, it’s by far the best head-to-head showing since the team expanded to three cars in 2018:
The flipside of when one of your drivers is having a dominant head-to-head season against teammates is that your other drivers are, by definition, not performing at the same level. (In fact, Blaney actually has a worse H2H record against all Cup Series foes: 508-191, or 72.7%.) For Cindric, this is kind of par for the course — the rest of his numbers are around his usual output, and he even has a winning overall record against the Cup field (363-336) despite going 10-28 against teammates.
But for Logano, 2026 has a good case to be the worst season of his Cup career, and certainly since his first full-time season as a teenager replacing Tony Stewart in the Home Depot No. 20 for Joe Gibbs Racing. Logano’s Driver Rating (74.7) is his lowest since 2011 (73.8) and 13.3 points below his average from the five years before; his Adjusted Points+ index (96) is his lowest ever as a full-time driver, 47 points below his previous five-year average. This is his worst head-to-head showing against teammates (16-22) since going 13-23 versus Keselowski in 2017, and the first time ever his overall record against the Cup field (332-367) has been under .500 in a full season.
The good news is that, with both non-Blaney drivers hovering around the cutline, there’s still a halfway-decent chance that both the Nos. 2 and 22 cars can join Blaney in The Chase despite the down performances. Right now, though, it’s more likely Penske gets only two of three drivers in — and maybe even just one of three, based on the odds from my 10,000 simulations of the remainder of the season:
Changing that begins this very weekend. Logano has the best recent record of any driver at Atlanta and its similar tracks, while Cindric ranks seventh. Though hoping for strong performances at a drafting track is far from ideal, this is also a unique opportunity — particularly coming on the heels of their second-best combined finish (12.5) since Bristol in mid-April at Chicagoland this past weekend.
But if Penske’s old second-half magic is going to show up again for anybody outside the 12 car, now would be a good time. Because for Cindric and (especially) Logano, this year’s stretch run isn’t about rounding into championship form as much as it is about surviving life on the cutline.
“Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.’ ”
Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger was nowhere to be found in the Midway this past weekend, but there was no shortage of high stakes and high drama. We’re now past the point of happenstance and coincidence in the feud between Austin Hill and Shane van Gisbergen, a pair of road-course rivals whose burgeoning bristling spilled over into a hearty serving of Chicago beef this past weekend.
That does not mean every bump and scrape between the two over the past three seasons has been intentional, but the file is thick enough now, and the war of words is only extending to where it can no longer be just chalked up to hard racing. What started as two aggressive road-course racers fighting for O’Reilly Auto Parts Series wins in 2024 has followed both drivers into the NASCAR Cup Series this season after Hill took over the No. 33 Chevrolet following Kyle Busch’s death, where the feud has been spotlighted, and every restart and on-track battle between them now comes with a full — and growing — set of receipts.
Sunday night at Chicagoland Speedway added the latest page.
On Lap 48, van Gisbergen’s No. 97 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet made contact with Hill’s No. 33 Richard Childress Racing entry as they raced through Turns 3 and 4 while battling in traffic. Hill’s car shot into the outside wall, ending his day early and prompting a pointed response from the RCR camp and the Georgia native afterward.
“I’m sure y’all have seen the replay,” he said. “So if I have to explain it, people probably need to get glasses.”
Van Gisbergen, who continued and finished 25th, denied that the contact was retaliation. He said he was trying to get to the bottom for clean air, was tight and that Hill “chopped (his) nose” before Hill got into the wall. Before heading to the garage, Hill showed his own displeasure by sideswiping van Gisbergen’s car under caution.
NASCAR reviewed the incident and issued no penalties to either driver in Tuesday’s penalty report. That closed the official infraction process. It did not, however, close the matter.
During this week’s “Hauler Talk” podcast, NASCAR vice president of racing communications Mike Forde said officials reviewed data, radio transmissions, camera angles and prior laps involving Hill and van Gisbergen before determining nothing proved the Chicagoland contact was “100% intentional and penalty-worthy.” Forde also said NASCAR still planned to meet with both drivers this weekend at EchoPark Speedway to make sure the situation does not “boil over” into something larger.
There is a reason for that — because Chicagoland was not a one-off.
The Hill-SVG history begins in earnest at Circuit of The Americas in March 2024, when both were still running in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Van Gisbergen, early in his first full-time NASCAR season and still somewhat introducing himself to the field, had control of an overtime restart, but Hill stayed attached to his bumper up the hill into Turn 1 as SVG ran wide and the No. 21 moved into the lead.
Van Gisbergen got back to Hill later on the final lap, using the front bumper into Turn 15 and pushing both cars wide. Kyle Larson slipped past both of them and drove away with the win. Hill finished second. Van Gisbergen crossed the line second but was later penalized 30 seconds for shortcutting the course, dropping him to 27th.
Neither driver left COTA content.
Van Gisbergen told FOX Sports that Hill “drove through me” in Turn 1 and said he “stood up for (himself).” Hill said from his perspective, van Gisbergen “just ran through us” into Turn 15.
At that point, it appeared to be just a heated finish. Two months later, we all realized it was actually the ember that sparked a thing.
Logan Riely | Getty Images
The next flashpoint came at Sonoma Raceway in June of that season. Hill led on a restart with 11 laps remaining and chose the left lane, with SVG alongside on the front row. Hill got the edge through Turn 1, but van Gisbergen had the inside line entering Turn 2. Contact followed, Hill slid wide, and van Gisbergen went on to win.
Hill kept his public comments restrained but pointed, saying he would “leave it to the keyboard warriors” and later, “I plead the fifth.”
The postrace cool-down lap was … a bit less civil. As van Gisbergen celebrated with a lap-long burnout, Hill drove by and gave him a one-finger salute. Van Gisbergen later said the gesture changed the intent of his celebration from fan service to something more pointed, saying on Corey LaJoie’s “Stacking Pennies” podcast: “This is for (Hill) now, not the fans.” From there, van Gisbergen followed Hill around the course, eventually passing him and waving as the moment became one of the rivalry’s signature visuals.
Van Gisbergen was more willing to connect the moment to COTA. Asked whether it was “fair game” after what had happened in Austin, van Gisbergen said, “One-hundred percent … ”
“ … I hate racing and thinking like that, but to me, we’ve both taken a race win off each other now,” van Gisbergen said after Sonoma.
From that moment, the rivalry became easier to label as such. COTA created the receipt, Sonoma cashed it, and this feud is still open for business.
The beef quieted down a bit last year, but the history resurfaced when their paths crossed in the Cup Series as things heated up again this summer.
Pocono Raceway added a tricky layer of frustration here as well, though not as straightforward as the incidents that came before and after it. During Stage 2 in last month’s race, SVG and Wood Brothers Racing’s Josh Berry made contact while racing off Turn 3 before Hill made it three-wide on the bottom. The stack-up sent Berry into the wall and triggered a chain reaction that collected several Chase hopefuls, including van Gisbergen, who finished 31st.
A week later at Naval Base Coronado, the connection was a bit harder to miss.
On a Lap 32 restart, Hill slid into Connor Zilisch entering the fast Turn 1, sending both cars into the fence. Van Gisbergen, who had little room to avoid the wreck, was collected in the pileup as both Trackhouse Racing entries were eliminated. Hill, Zilisch and van Gisbergen were credited with 36th through 38th.
For SVG, the damage extended beyond the race car. San Diego was a major opportunity for him specifically, needing to maximize there with a Chase spot still very much up in the air.
He left with one point, knowing exactly who to blame.
Van Gisbergen was even more direct, saying he had been taken out “two weeks in a row” by the same “spud,” grouping San Diego with the Pocono crash a week earlier.
The following week at Sonoma, van Gisbergen said it took him a couple of days to decompress and that he was “pretty pissed” about a strong opportunity gone. (Needless to say, he came out to Wine Country with a chip on his shoulder and stomped the field en route to victory.)
Still, that backdrop followed both drivers to Chicagoland.
From Hill’s side, the Lap 48 contact in the return to the 1.5-mile speedway looked obvious enough that he did not see much need to explain it. From SVG’s side, it was a racing incident caused by dirty air, a tight race car and Hill blocking his air. Over RCR’s radio, team owner Richard Childress viewed it as retribution.
The radio traffic made clear how hot the No. 33 team was. Childress called it “payback for California,” while spotter Derek Kneeland referred to van Gisbergen as “Van Guggenheimer,” adding a little mispronunciation-fueled venom to the moment in a work of linguistic art fit for museum placement.
Van Gisbergen had his own jab afterward — asked whether he would speak with Hill, he kept it short: “I’ll talk to him, but he just grunts.”
From NASCAR’s side, however, it was not clear enough to warrant a penalty.
That may be the most important piece entering EchoPark. NASCAR did not say nothing happened. Officials said they did not find enough to remove reasonable doubt and issue discipline. That leaves the feud in an uneasy middle lane: serious enough for a meeting between the sanctioning body and both drivers this weekend, not definitive enough for a deterrent penalty.
It also leaves the door open, in theory, for escalation.
And that is where Hill and van Gisbergen sit now. Two drivers with different racing backgrounds, different explanations of the same incident(s) and enough shared history that the next piece of contact cannot be judged on its own in a vacuum.
The penalty report closed Chicagoland’s official review.
It’s a split-squad type of weekend as the NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series visit EchoPark Speedway near Atlanta for the second time in 2026. Meanwhile, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series heads to the Northeast for a trip to Lime Rock Park for the second year in a row. See qualifying orders for all three series.
JOLIET, Ill. — Alex Bowman knows he didn’t put any extra effort into Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Chicagoland Speedway. His preparation was the same as it is every week, he said, as was the prep of the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team.
But for the first time since May, that work paid off with a top-five finish in Sunday’s eero 400, a much-needed boost for a driver and team that have heard all the noise in the midst of a season in which Bowman and Co. sit 29th in the points standings with just seven races remaining before The Chase.
“Everybody here sees all the bull-[expletive], just like I do,” Bowman said. “They all care a lot and work really hard, and how this car runs means a lot to a lot of people. So having those people have a good week — a good start to their week at least and not be starting the week mad about the weekend — is good. Hopefully, we can keep it up.”
The last time NASCAR raced at Chicagoland in 2019, Bowman was celebrating in Victory Lane. Sunday’s performance may not have been a literal win, but it checked several boxes, including a top-15 qualifying effort, stage points earned and a second straight top-10 finish.
“We unloaded happier with the car than we have lately and felt like sim was better than it has been for us lately, and just every little part and piece was a little bit better,” Bowman said. “And nothing went wrong throughout the course of the race, even though we fired off way too tight, not where we needed to be. But yeah, I feel like we put together a solid day and keep digging at it.”
He also continued his underdog run in the second edition of the In-Season Challenge, which pays $1 million to the tournament winner following the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Bowman advanced as the bottommost No. 32 seed into the quarterfinal Round of 8 after upsets against No. 1 Tyler Reddick at Sonoma Raceway and No. 16 seed Austin Cindric on Sunday at Chicagoland. He’ll face No. 25 Todd Gilliland next as the series shifts to EchoPark Speedway on Sunday (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“Had a whole lot of personality with me versus Cindric on that one,” Bowman joked. “But yeah, it definitely pays a lot of money, so you’ve gotta pay attention to it. But at the same time — I feel like it’s my answer to every single question that I get asked — but we’re just super focused on trying to turn things around and get pointed back in the right direction on this team. That means a lot more than the in-season deal for us.”
Jonathan Bachman | Getty Images
To finally have positive momentum following the No. 48 team is a welcome change — not just for those directly working on that car — but also for the whole of Hendrick Motorsports. Bowman missed four races this spring after a bout with vertigo and has just seven top-20 finishes in 15 starts in what is a contract year for him.
Chad Knaus, Hendrick Motorsports’ vice president of competition and a seven-time Cup Series champion crew chief, has seen the work put into turning the No. 48 team’s results around, making Sunday’s finish more rewarding.
“That team has been rebuilding and growing and getting stronger and tougher all year long,” Knaus told NASCAR.com. “And it’s good to see Alex comfortable enough in the car that he can get out there and race and put the car in situations that are compromising (and) be able to pull it off. So I’m really proud of those guys. They’ve needed a little bit of momentum, and the last couple weeks they’ve been getting some, so it’s nice to see.”
At the core of the No. 48 team’s success is Bowman and crew chief Blake Harris. The duo has been paired together since 2023, and they’ve collected one win, claiming the 2024 Chicago Street Race victory. Their chemistry remains strong, bolstered through adversity rather than weakened by it, Harris told NASCAR.com.
“I think what people don’t see behind the scenes is we’re always building this team,” Harris said. “And I’m always good with this guy (Bowman). Like, guys talk about radio chatter or whatever, but like I hang out with this guy in my free time, right? So he and I, our team, we’ll go into next week with the same prep as if something bad happened to be finished 36th this week, right? It doesn’t change for us. That’s kind of what the Cup Series is, though, right? The day you think you’ve got it figured out, you come back the next week and get your teeth kicked in, and you just can’t afford to ever lay down.
“Everybody’s been working hard, been working no different than if we’d have been running top five every week. Just, it feels like once the metric flips and you get some good finishes and get those later qualifying spots, pit stalls come with that. The whole day just becomes a little bit easier. That’s kind of why I say momentum is not a fake thing in the Cup Series. It just helps your odds of pushing forward when you have things go right.”
Josh Vanada of JDV Productions has never been afraid to express his love for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.
He’s been a fan of Modified racing since childhood and has spent the last several seasons working to support the series by promoting events and offering bonus programs to competitors.
That love for NASCAR’s oldest division drives him to keep coming back and making his programs bigger and better each season.
Vanada, who has served as the general manager of Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park and the promoter of Monadnock Speedway, has stepped things up a notch yet again this year with the introduction of the Whelen Midsummer Championship.
The three-race miniseries, which began last Wednesday at Seekonk Speedway and includes Friday’s race at Claremont Motorsports Park and the July 25 event at Monadnock, is the latest evolution of what started as the Whelen Granite State Short Track Cup in 2022.
Vanada explained the adjustments to the program were the result of several factors, chief among them being changes to the Modified Tour schedule in 2026.
“I think the Tour schedule has a little bit more diversity than it has had in the past couple of years. That was one factor,” Vanada said. “The fact that Seekonk had asked my coaching business to sponsor the Firecracker 150, then we had Claremont and Monadnock all in the same month, it just lended itself to a really cool July program. In the past we’ve kind of just run it over the summer. Now we’re running it essentially over the course of a month.
“Yes, the name has changed slightly, but we felt like the Midsummer Challenge is a little bit of a refresh. It’s the largest program we’ve ever put together.”
The Whelen Midsummer Championship will conclude on July 25 at Monadnock Speedway with the champion earning $5,000. (Photo: Jaiden Tripi/NASCAR)
The Whelen Midsummer Championship boasts a total purse of $25,000. The champion of the miniseries takes $5,000, with $2,500 going to second and $1,000 to third.
That’s not all. There is also the Hard Charger Award, which will pay $500 per event, as well as the Hard Luck Award, worth another $500 per race. There is also the JDV Loyalty Program Tire Bonus, which is valued at $3,500.
“The winner’s money is great, but there is only one of them,” Vanada said. “I think that’s something that I have learned over my career that is valuable. We need to make sure everybody stays in the field, especially the people who are running sixth to 20th.
“Let’s face it, $500 to these teams, it’s really not a lot in the grand scheme of their expense costs. It’s a way that we can say that we appreciate their effort and acknowledge it and give them a little bit to keep them going.”
Last, but certainly not least, if a driver can win all three races as part of the Whelen Midsummer Challenge, he’ll earn a $10,000 bonus. After winning at Seekonk, Matt Hirschman is the only driver who can potentially earn that bonus.
This is the largest bonus program Vanada and JDV Productions have put together for the Modified Tour, and it’s a great source of pride.
“Being able to have something to keep the teams going in the summer stretch when it’s hot, when you’ve got to see yourself to the back end of the championship run that starts in August, it just seems like the timing is really good,” Vanada said. “To give a little bit of an injection of cash in the summer is something that we’re happy to do.
“It just injects some real life. You have a championship coming halfway through the year before you pivot to the last six or seven races of the season and really focus your eye on the season-long championship.”
Matt Hirschman has won two of JDV Productions’ miniseries championships since Josh Vanada began promoting the programs in 2022. (Photo: Jaiden Tripi/NASCAR)
While the Whelen Midsummer Championship is the brainchild of Vanada, the program wouldn’t be what it is today without the support of Whelen Engineering.
The company, in addition to serving as the title sponsor of the Modified Tour since 2005, has been a key part of what is now the Whelen Midsummer Championship since it was initially created in 2022.
Whelen Engineering operates a manufacturing facility just 20 minutes from Claremont Motorsports Park, and Vanada expects to host roughly 200 Whelen employees during Friday’s Clash at Claremont.
“Two of the three tracks are within 40 miles of Whelen,” Vanada said. “They get what we’re trying to do. They’ve invested for so long dating back to the Phil Kurze days when Phil and I used to do business together. They’re just terrific to deal with. They’re a local success story of a company that started out and grew and grew and has now become international.
“They haven’t forgotten where they come from. To be able to have a company that has scaled like that that also has that level of grassroots involvement is great. You can’t ask for better people to deal with.”
Ultimately, the Whelen Midsummer Championship is a passion project for Vanada. It’s his way of giving back to the division he grew to love as a child.
Now, as an adult, he can help it thrive. He plans to do that as long as possible.
“I grew up watching the Modifieds. I think I’ve said consistently I’m a fan first,” Vanada said. “That’s a division I have a lot of passion for. It’s the first division I kind of really fell in love with. It’s historic; it’s NASCAR oldest division.
“This is a labor of love. Just like it’s a labor of love for the racers, it’s a labor of love for me, too.”
NASCAR Cup Series driver Tyler Reddick has been nominated for the 2026 ESPYS Best Driver Award.
Reddick, who drives for the Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin-owned 23XI Racing, won the season-opening Daytona 500 and followed it by winning the next two races, becoming the first Cup Series driver to start the year with three consecutive victories. His momentum carried over to wins at Darlington Raceway and Kansas Speedway as Reddick matched Dale Earnhardt’s 1987 feat of winning five of the first nine races.
Kimi Antonelli and Lando Norris from Formula One and IndyCar’s Alex Palou were also nominated for the award. The winner will be announced during the show at 8 p.m. ET on July 15 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City (televised on ABC and streaming on the ESPN App). Comedian Marcello Hernández will host the show.
Reddick looks to become the first NASCAR driver to win the award since Kyle Larson took home the honors in 2022. In total, 19 NASCAR drivers have won the Best Driver Award, with Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon each winning four times.
When Sheldon Creed rolls through the gates of EchoPark Speedway this weekend, he’ll be greeted by memories of his shinning moment. It was there in February that the California native finally broke through, holding off the field in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race to earn his long-awaited first series victory.
After 137 prior attempts, Creed was the beneficiary of a last-lap tangle between Austin Hill and Ross Chastain. The No. 00 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet scooted by and held off the roaring field for the elusive win. He put to rest the moniker of being the driver with the most runner-up finishes — 15 to be exact — in series history without hoisting a trophy.
“It wasn’t very fun going that long without winning,” Creed told NASCAR.com last week. “It would be one thing if I ran 10th to 15th every week, but I was so close so many times and something would happen or go wrong.”
The narrow defeats began to build frustration. In 2024 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, he tied Dale Jarrett and Daniel Hemric for the most second-place efforts before winning (10). He shattered that record, finishing second with three different organizations: Richard Childress Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing and Haas Factory Team.
Snagging a victory early in 2026 was a morale boost for the entire No. 00 team. Creed had an average first year with Haas in 2025, recording eight top-five and 16 top-10 finishes.
“I think that was massive for confidence for myself and the team, getting these guys back into Victory Lane,” Creed said.
Crew chief Jonathan Toney, the always upbeat leader of the No. 00 bunch, knew a victory was within reach. He was adjusting to Creed’s style last year, spending the prior two years with Cole Custer. Naturally, the two drivers billed from Southern California were more parallel than Toney could have even imagined with their Southern California swagger.
Toney always believed Creed could get the job done.
“I always said, you don’t finish second [15] times and not be capable of winning races,” Toney said. “Things just didn’t fall his way on several occasions that kept him out of Victory Lane. We all knew he was capable of winning.
“Just getting that win for him and the smile on his face and the next couple of weeks was such a blessing to be a part of and see that.”
The triumph came earlier than expected in 2026. Over the offseason, Haas Factory Team put in plenty of labor to switch from Ford to Chevrolet, returning to the Hendrick Motorsports engine pipeline.
Aside from the signature EchoPark win, Creed has pumped out his most consistent season to date. He believes he had more raw speed in 2024, his stopgap season at JGR, but this is the most comparable year he’s had, already matching the top-five finishes he posted in his first season with HFT. That total is tied for second in the series (Brent Crews) behind Justin Allgaier’s 12 top-five results.
Sean Gardner | Getty Images
Consistency has been one of Creed’s biggest strengths in 2026. With 13 races remaining, he’s on pace to eclipse his previous best average finish — lowering it from 11.7 in 2024 to 10.3 — while avoiding the incidents that plagued him in past seasons, with just one DNF in 20 races.
“This year, we’ve been clicking it off,” Creed said. “Even when we’re not a winning race car, we can go and finish fourth or fifth. I feel like our window is a little bit bigger this year on speed. Last year, we had to hit it perfectly to be fast.”
The No. 00 team is still working to unlock more raw speed, but Creed has remained competitive, ranking 10th among series regulars in laps led (93). He also sits seventh in stage points at 118 — less than half of Allgaier’s 250.
“I think that’s just maturity on [Creed’s] part and learning race craft,” Toney said of the uptick in finishes, noting the core group of the No. 00 team has been together since 2023. “He has been with some great organizations that he was able to learn from, so we were benefiting from that and the experience.”
With four races remaining in the regular season, Creed sits one point behind Corey Day for third in the driver standings. He is within 30 points of reigning series champion Jesse Love for second but is also only 43 points above Carson Kvapil in seventh.
It’s paramount for the No. 00 team to conclude the regular season strong to be closer to the front of The Chase field come September. Regardless, Creed believes he can be a player for the 2026 championship. He isn’t counting out Austin Hill or fellow Haas driver Sam Mayer as title threats.
“I think a lot because we can run consistently,” Creed said. “I think it’s going to be between six of us. You could probably throw a couple more in if they get consistent. It’s hard to count anybody out, but just looking at the season, I would say it’s those four to six.”
First on the docket is a return to the Peach State on Saturday (7 p.m. ET, The CW, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where Creed hopes to pick up right where he left off in February.
“It will be like every other week,” Creed said. “We’re going to go with the same goal of trying to win. I know we’re not going to go back the same. Our car was good, but I thought it could have been a little better.”
NASCAR reviewed data from every lap that Austin Hill and Shane van Gisbergen were on track before deciding neither driver would be penalized for their Chicagoland Speedway incident.
During the latest episode of the “Hauler Talk” podcast, NASCAR vice president of racing communications Mike Forde said officials would still meet with van Gisbergen and Hill this weekend at EchoPark Speedway.
On the 48th lap of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race in Joliet, Illinois, Hill’s No. 33 Chevrolet crashed in Turn 4 after being hit from behind by van Gisbergen’s No. 97 while battling for 28th.
“We want to have a discussion and make sure that it doesn’t boil over into a significant problem at Atlanta or beyond,” Forde said, adding there was no penalty to Hill for hitting van Gisbergen’s car under caution. “So we plan to have that conversation on Saturday.”
Forde said NASCAR competition strategist Scott Miller began studying throttle, steering and braking data at the Remote Race Control center immediately after the incident and then reviewed the entire race Monday.
“We looked to see if there were any anomalies throughout the race and something that spurred this that maybe was payback from earlier,” Forde said. “We went through all the radio transmissions to see if there was anything that rose to kind of a smoking gun. Camera angles and all available resources, as we always say. And nothing in our eyes proved definitively this was 100% intentional and penalty-worthy.”
NASCAR has previously penalized drivers who admitted to intentionally causing a crash, but van Gisbergen radioed his team that it was an accident.
Forde said NASCAR doesn’t necessarily need an admission of guilt to penalize a driver, but that made the difference in past penalties to Ryan Preece and Denny Hamlin.
“There’s enough reasonable doubt to where it didn’t rise to the penalty for us here,” Forde said. “If you remove that reasonable doubt, then you’re going to get a penalty. If you say you’re going to do it and then do it, that is going to rise to the level of a penalty.”
NASCAR will also meet with Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar on Saturday after their incident at Chicagoland.
“The same review went into it, and nothing rose to the level of there being no doubt it was intentional, so we are opting to not penalize there,” Forde said. “But we’ll be having a conversation in the hauler between those two drivers, too. So it’ll be a busy hauler.”
Other topics covered by Forde and senior director of racing communications Amanda Ellis during the 61st episode of “Hauler Talk,” which explores competition issues in NASCAR:
— Why Ryan Preece was towed to the garage instead of the pit lane after his early incident at Chicagoland.
— How many teams were running lifts that help with flat tires.
— The reason a pothole appeared in the pits and how it was fixed.
— The resolution on the positioning of Preece’s headrest for Sunday’s race.
Click on the embed below to listen or search for “Hauler Talk” wherever you download podcasts to hear it on your phone, tablet or mobile device.
Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA Today Co. and, for the past 10 years, at NBC Sports Digital. He is a contributor to the “Hauler Talk” show on the NASCAR Podcast Network. He has also covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.
