NASCAR officials have disqualified the No. 35 23XI Racing Toyota, driven by Riley Herbst, after the car failed to make minimum weight after Sunday’s Cup Series race at the Charlotte Roval.
The rookie driver had originally crossed the line in 30th, one lap down at the 17-turn, 2.28-mile road course. It’s the second Roval race in a row where officials have disqualified a car for failing to make weight, as Alex Bowman’s playoff run came to a halt with a similar issue last year.
Herbst had multiple hiccups on the afternoon, flattening his own tire on Lap 58 after a retaliation attempt on Ty Dillon. Moments later, he went spinning off the bumper of Kyle Busch coming through the Turn 17 chicane.
The No. 35 car, as well as the No. 41 Ford piloted by Cole Custer, will return to the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina, for further inspection. There were no other issues.
Shane van Gisbergen won Sunday’s race, leading 57 laps and cruising to a 15.160-second triumph over defending winner Kyle Larson.
CONCORD, N.C. — The drama of the postseason doesn’t get more tense than Sunday’s Cup Series Playoffs Round of 12 elimination race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
Joey Logano crossed the finish line 20th on the final lap, when he was in a dead heat with Ross Chastain at the cutline for the final transfer spot into the Round of 8. As the three-time series champion completed the frontstretch chicane, two cars were spun backward just before the checkered flag — Denny Hamlin’s and Chastain’s.
Logano beat Chastain by 0.167 seconds as the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet drove backward across the line.
When the smoke settled, Logano grasped the final semifinal spot by four points.
“If you’re one of those people that say playoff points don’t matter, stage wins don’t matter, regular-season races don’t matter — go watch that,” Logano said.
For 109 grueling laps around the 17-turn road course/oval hybrid, Logano and Chastain were nearly inseparable at the cutline.
One lap, Logano would be ahead. Then the next, Chastain would slide into the eighth spot. And with heavy tire falloff heightening the importance of strategy and pit-road execution, Sunday shaped up as a three-hour game of chess between the No. 1 and No. 22 teams around the 2.28-mile circuit.
The No. 22 crew slipped up first with a slow change on the right-front tire in the final stage as Chastain drove by their pit stall.
But the race flipped back in Logano’s favor after a costly speeding penalty by Chastain on the final stop with 20 to go, which the 2022 Championship 4 finalist ultimately said was the reason he won’t race for the Bill France Cup for the remainder of the season.
“I single-handedly took a car out of the Round of 8 and a chance to go to the round of four,” Chastain lamented. “In two months, we’ve elevated ourselves from, I say, an 18th-place car to an eighth-place car. Today, we were good enough to run top five, and I took us out of that. It’s all on me.”
As the laps wound down, No. 22 crew chief Paul Wolfe made the gutsy decision to pit Logano with 10 to go in hopes of being able to either force Chastain and the No. 1 team to cover or have the tire advantage to make up the spots to elevate above Chastain on the cutline.
Chastain ran the final 20 laps without pitting, and Logano was forced to try to make up as ground as possible. But with Logano not having the outright speed, he needed Chastain to lose spots.
AJ Allmendinger, Tyler Reddick got by. Then, Bubba Wallace and Chase Briscoe. Chastain lost the spots, and the pressure was on to hold serve, but he was unsuccessful. Ford drivers Josh Berry and Todd Gilliland slipped past the No. 1 Chevy with Hamlin serving as the final point to get Logano through.
Hamlin passed Chastain on the final lap in Turn 7, and Chastain attempted a last-ditch effort in the frontstretch chicane that ultimately sent both the No. 1 and No. 11 spinning before the checkered flag — cementing another gutsy call for Wolfe as a success.
“Unfortunately, we just didn’t have the speed, and it just makes it hard to call the strategy at times,” Wolfe told NASCAR.com. “They’re running numbers based off of an average lap-time curve, right? And at one point, I’m just, like, ‘guy, we got to figure this off of our lap times, what we’re capable of doing because we have all the programs that are running and telling you, is it faster to stop two or three times?’ Finally there at the end, once Ross got to us there before that stop, I was like, ‘listen, just what’s our numbers telling us for us?’ And it told us we were faster to stop again. I said, ‘well, it doesn’t matter what the 1 does, we’re going to stick to our strategy,’ and obviously it paid off, and did what we expected.”
Hamlin, who advanced to the Round of 8 by 33 points, was collateral damage and finished 23rd after straightening out his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. The 44-year-old veteran said he was unaware of what the points scenario was between Chastain and Logano on the final lap.
“Honestly, I was just running. I saw the 1 was fading. I didn’t see the 22. I assumed the 22 was way ahead of us. So honestly, I was driving blind. I had no idea the points situation,” Hamlin said. “I was just trying not to wreck the 1. He was fading, but I didn’t want to get into him or anything like that. I didn’t want any parts of it. No one told me anything, so I just had absolutely no idea.”
David Jensen | Getty Images
“They were innocent bystanders in it,” Chastain said of spinning Hamlin. “And whether he knew or not, I don’t know. I would hate to be in that position. The past speaks for itself, and I’m more aware of my surroundings. I am sorry to them, sorry to Denny, I’m sorry to JGR and his whole team. They were definitely innocent bystanders.”
Chastain’s crew chief Phil Surgen called the final lap ‘suspenseful.’ He could only helplessly watch the No. 1 car try to survive and advance on track.
However, he said he’s overall proud of the fight from his team with a handful of low points throughout the 2025 season.
“We still don’t feel good about where our speed’s at and how competitive we are,” Surgen told NASCAR.com. “But through the lull in the summer that we had with some wrecks and some lackluster performance, everybody dug in deep and started the playoffs. We started qualifying better. We started finishing better, putting races together. The pit crew was rolling, and just all that energy that came together in the playoffs was really great. Hopefully, we can build on that more for the end of the year and for next year.”
Another year, another bid into the Round of 8 as Logano makes the semifinal round for the 10th time in the playoff era.
The trust between Logano and Wolfe only continues to grow, and they’ll begin the Round of 8 at the same track that set them up for a championship last season – Las Vegas Motor Speedway next Sunday (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
“In my opinion, there’s no one better than Paul at calling a race,” Logano said. “He’s really, really good at it, so I trust that he makes the right calls.
“What you did in the past never guarantees success in the future. But to be able to still be around — that’s all you’ve got to do in these playoffs. Just stay alive. It’s been a grind so far and we’ll grind it out to the very end.”
The NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 8 field is cemented after non-playoff driver Shane van Gisbergen picked up his fifth consecutive road-course victory Sunday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
Joey Logano clinched the final spot in the semifinal round, using fresh tires after a pit stop with 11 laps to go to sneak past Ross Chastain by four points. Tied going into the final corners, Chastain entered the frontstretch chicane at high speed, knocking Denny Hamlin around in a last-ditch attempt to advance. Chastain also spun, reversing to the start/finish line but not in time to advance as Logano picked up multiple spots in the melee.
Chastain had two issues on pit road Sunday afternoon, overshooting pit exit after Stage 1 and speeding during Lap 87 service.
William Byron, Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin all advanced based on finishing position at the Roval. Byron placed 11th, Briscoe 14th and Hamlin 23rd.
Both Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell clinched Round of 8 spots earlier in Sunday’s 109-lap thriller, Larson advancing after placing second in Stage 1 and Bell advancing after finishing seventh in Stage 2. The drivers scored a combined 14 points and 11 points in the opening two frames, respectively.
A pair of former Cup Series champions already clinched their spots in the semifinal round before Roval weekend. Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney picked up his third win of the season two weeks ago at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and Chase Elliott of Hendrick Motorsports scored a thrilling victory last weekend at Kansas Speedway.
Chastain, Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing and Team Penske’s Austin Cindric were eliminated.
CONCORD, N.C. — As expected, road-course maven Shane van Gisbergen won Sunday’s Bank of America Roval 400, but that was only a small part of the story at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course.
Long after van Gisbergen took the checkered flag to record his fifth straight road-course victory of the NASCAR Cup Series season, Ross Chastain made a banzai run in the frontstretch chicane and wiped out Denny Hamlin’s Toyota in a desperate attempt to secure the final spot in the playoffs’ Round of 8.
Spinning after the contact with Hamlin’s car, Chastain threw his car into reverse and sped backwards across the finish line, but the effort proved futile. The final Round of 8 spot instead went to defending series champion Joey Logano, who finished 20th and advanced by four points over the Trackhouse Racing driver.
A pair of mistakes on pit road cost Chastain dearly. At the first stage break, he ran wide into the 90-degree corner at the exit from pit road, missed the turn and came to a stop, losing 15 positions to restart 30th.
After recovering from that error and putting himself in position to advance, Chastain sped on pit road on Lap 87 of 109, ran long to the finish and lost too many spots on the final two laps to hold off Logano.
“(Trackhouse owner) Justin (Marks) hired me to carry this 1 car and to drive it and to be a leader, and I just completely unraveled our day,” a crestfallen Chastain said. “We definitely had the speed on the last lap, yeah, and missed turn 7, and I slid the rear tires and let the 11 (Hamlin) by.
“Yeah, not acceptable. I just completely … you know, just completely unacceptable.”
Logano was delighted to escape the race at the 2.28-mile circuit with the opportunity for a fourth NASCAR Cup Series title intact.
“Such a close finish there,” he said. “Yeah, knew it was within a point there (before the last-corner collision). I knew we were going to be tied there at the end, and Ross was going to do whatever he had to do to make it happen. Geesh, just wasn’t quite fast enough today with our car.
“It’s the drama of the playoffs. If you want drama, the playoffs bring it every time.”
Eliminated along with Chastain were pole winner Tyler Reddick (10th), Bubba Wallace (15th) and Austin Cindric, who needed a win to advance and instead finished last (37th) after a litany of issues throughout the race.
Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott already had advanced to the Round of 8 with respective Round of 12 victories at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Kansas Speedway. Race runner-up Kyle Larson, third-place Christopher Bell, William Byron, Chase Briscoe, Hamlin and Logano joined them after Sunday’s elimination race.
Both Larson and Bell made van Gisbergen’s task harder than usual. The New Zealander, however, was so good at managing his fragile tires that he finished the final 59-lap stage on two pit stops compared with three for his closest pursuers.
The result was a whopping 15.160-second margin of victory over Larson for the driver of the No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. The victory was his fifth of the season and sixth overall, and his five straight road course wins are one short of Jeff Gordon’s series record, set from 1997 through 2000.
Both Bell and Larson were aggressive in their attempts to unseat NASCAR’s current road course king. On Lap 63, Larson muscled his way past van Gisbergen, with Bell following into second.
After a cycle of green-flag pit stops, the Kiwi passed Bell for second. Eight laps later, he dived to the inside of Larson’s No. 5 Chevrolet in the Turn 7 hairpin and regained the lead.
After another round of pit stops, SVG and Larson swapped the lead with significant contact between their cars before van Gisbergen passed Larson through the backstretch chicane on Lap 98 and held it the rest of the way.
“Yeah, just started getting hot and sliding around, but what an awesome race,” van Gisbergen said. “Kyle and Christopher driving really good and got a little rough, but, man, the battle was awesome.
“With the Chevy, I lost it a little bit at the start of Stage 3, and whatever they did for the rest of the race, unbelievable. Really enjoyed that, and that was a long time waiting, hoping the yellow wasn’t going to come out (as he ran late on older tires).”
Briscoe made the Round of 8 by 19 points with a 14th-place finish despite feeling ill during the race. At one point, he asked for a bag of ice, which he stuffed inside his driver’s suit.
“It was definitely an odd day,” Briscoe said. “We definitely just weren’t that great. I don’t know. They gave me a pill in the beginning, and I felt a lot better. I was just so dizzy … I’ve been fighting something all week, and I sound terrible, I’m sure.”
Non-playoff drivers Chris Buescher, Michael McDowell, Ryan Preece and Daniel Suárez finished fourth through seventh, respectively. Elliott was eighth, followed by AJ Allmendinger and Reddick.
The Round of 8 begins next Sunday with the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (5:30 p.m. ET on USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Note: The No. 35 Toyota driven by Riley Herbst was disqualified in post-race inspection for failing post-race weights. All other cars cleared inspection, validating van Gisbergen’s victory. The Nos. 35 and 41 are returning to the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina, for teardown inspection.
Carson Hocevar made contact with Austin Cindric entering the frontstretch chicane at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, all but ending Cindric’s chances at advancing in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
On Lap 32, Hocevar entered Turn 16 with too much speed, spinning through the corner and contacting Cindric. Both drivers suffered damage and came down pit road for repairs. Cindric, the Team Penske driver, fell 22 laps down, ultimately ending his playoff hopes as he finished 36th.
It was the second incident that Hocevar had partial responsibility for, contacting Kyle Busch in Turn 1 of Lap 1 as the Richard Childress Racing driver hit the wall and fell several laps down.
“Just a shame that we got hit so perfectly, that KO’d all of my rear suspension,” Cindric said after the race. “You don’t want three races to define your season. It’s amazing how much everything ebbs and flows throughout the year. You feel like for a month, you can’t do anything wrong, and for three weeks that matter the most, you feel like you can’t do anything right. It’s just how the cookie crumbles and you gotta be on it, and we’ll learn.”
Before the Stage 2 mishap, Cindric had already suffered a pair of issues in the backstretch chicane. He blew the corner at Lap 9, serving his stop-and-go penalty on the racing surface before falling to 23rd position. Moments later, Cindric went for a spin in Turn 3 off the nose of Justin Haley, forcing him to pit road with scuffed tires.
“It’s such a long race here, like, in those moments, I didn’t feel like I was out of it,” Cindric said, reflecting back to before his tangle with Hocevar. “I just wanted to not put us in a situation where we’re completely out of it, just knowing the strategies were going to get super crazy with the super long run, having the [tire] falloff we had [Saturday], knowing how big the windows were.”
But in a sense, those moments were like a microcosm of Cindric’s entire Round of 12, finishing no better than 17th (New Hampshire) in three races. Though the contact from the Spire Motorsports driver essentially ended his championship hopes, the fourth-year driver from Mooresville, North Carolina, shouldered most of the blame.
“I mean, this round was definitely tough for us. I mean, never really feel like we even had the speed to get stage points in any of the races,” he said. “But I also feel like I take a lot of that with having a qualifying lap each week that probably would have put me in the top 10 and slipping up and not being able to execute. I feel like I displayed some of my car control more than I displayed speed this round, so I feel like that falls on me.”
Although eliminated, Cindric still has more to look forward to in the season’s final four races. After Las Vegas Motor Speedway next Sunday (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), it’s s trip to Talladega Superspeedway, a track that he won at in the spring.
And while the stats might not show it, earning just five top 10s so far, Cindric believes that it’s been his best Cup Series season to date.
“There’s a lot of races this year that we had speed and a lot of capability and execution to try and contend for race wins,” Cindric said, reflecting on the first 32 races. “There’s been so many races that we’ve run exceptionally well. You think about Indy and Iowa, even Richmond, places that feel like we had opportunities taken away from us in some respects, and that’s going to happen, but you want to consistently run well.
“I would agree that this has definitely been my best season to date – it doesn’t feel that way today, but I think it’s definitely something to build on.”
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Following Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 12 finale at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, you can ride along in an official NASCAR hauler as it makes the 2,200-mile trip to Las Vegas.
Watch the live dash-cam feed of the open highway, big miles and a behind-the-scenes journey that keeps the NASCAR season rolling, presented by Mobil Delvac.
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CONCORD, N.C. — For a brief time Saturday, Tyler Reddick was able to hop in the No. 45 Toyota and hone in on leading his 23XI Racing group closer to the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Those efforts proved fruitful as he earned pole position for Sunday’s Bank of America Roval 400 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Outside the car, though, he and wife Alexa Reddick have been pinning all focus on their son Rookie, who at 4 months old remains in the cardiovascular intensive care unit at Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, amid recent health concerns.
Alexa Reddick shared on Sept. 28 that doctors discovered Rookie was displaying signs of heart failure. Her latest update, shared to Instagram on Saturday night, provided additional news, posted some six hours after Tyler Reddick won the pole.
“Rookie has a tumor that’s ‘choking’ the renal vein & renal artery,” her post read, “telling the heart, ‘hey I’m not getting enough blood… pump harder,’ causing the enlarged heart. He will need the entire kidney removed as it is not believed to be functioning any longer. He will undergo open surgery to remove his right kidney. We’re just not sure when. Waiting is OK right now to give his heart a break while he’s on (blood pressure) medication. They expect his heart to fully recover because it was just an innocent bystander. We have answers but a journey ahead to bring our little Cookie home.”
The circumstances have weighed heavily on the family, putting full priority into ensuring Rookie’s recovery and well-being while Tyler also pursues a spot in the Round of 8. But anything related to Reddick’s day job has taken an obvious backseat to his son’s health crisis.
The Reddicks received more answers following last week’s race at Kansas Speedway.
“In some ways, I was fortunate when I came home (from Kansas),” Reddick said Saturday at Charlotte. “Basically, as I was rolling into the hospital, they were able to somewhat understand fully — to a much clearer picture — what exactly it was. They obviously knew what the issue was, so they found the cause. So I can’t imagine what that was like for my wife at the hospital. She’s there looking at our son, and they’re still trying to diagnose and understand what the issue is.
“Certainly something crazy you obviously never expect, but it’s a lot to go through for my wife, for my son, my other son as well, Beau. So it’s trying to manage it all.”
Indeed, Alexa Reddick has been there for every moment as she and Rookie navigate their circumstances together. That hasn’t gone unnoticed by her husband.
“Just really proud of her, honestly, throughout this whole process,” Tyler Reddick said. “She’s been — I hate to even use the word, but locked in, honestly, on everything that’s going on, whether that’s what they found today, what the plan is going forward, everything. She’s paying, obviously, very close attention and just giving very good feedback to the doctors on past history and everything. Yeah, difficult situation for both of us being but she’s been a great one.”
Reddick enters Sunday’s race 29 points beneath the cutline to advance into the next round of the playoffs, a virtual must-win situation that was aided by a strong qualifying effort Saturday that has him leading the field to the green flag for the Round of 12 finale. But when he’s not behind the wheel, Reddick is looking at what’s most important.
“I think you just try to be as present as you can,” he said, “whether that’s on the phone like I was in Kansas or in person like I was this week. Just be there as much as I can. Me and Alexa feel, right now, good enough for me to be here today.”
Editor’s note: Projection updated after Saturday’s practice and qualifying sessions.
The ebbs and flows of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs are set for a crash course with arguably the biggest wild card yet. Sunday’s race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) trims the field of 12 remaining postseason contenders down to just eight as we begin the month-long countdown to Championship Weekend in Phoenix.
But before even thinking about a Championship 4 berth, a tall mountain stands in NASCAR’s backyard. The Roval’s 17-turn, 2.28-mile configuration completes a hexad of road-course races on the 2025 schedule with tight, technical corners that, in a sense, mimic tracks like Martinsville Speedway or New Hampshire Motor Speedway. It’s a unique beast compared to the other left- and right-hand events on the Cup calendar.
While the playoffs are at the forefront, the projected winner isn’t — although at this point, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Racing Insights predicts that Shane van Gisbergen will win Sunday’s Bank of America Roval 400, notching both his fifth consecutive road-course victory and fifth of the campaign.
The Kiwi’s meteoric rise in the Cup Series is trending in a historic direction. Leading a whopping 52% of road-course laps so far, SVG sits third all-time on the road with an 8.18 average finish (only to Hall of Famers Fireball Roberts and Buck Baker) and would become the first driver to earn his first six wins at road courses with a trip to Victory Lane on Sunday. He could also become the second driver to win five straight on road courses, matching Jeff Gordon’s clip from 1997-2000.
According to NASCAR Insights, SVG leads four of the five categories on road courses this year: speed, long-run pace, passing and restarts. The only outlier? Defense, which in all fairness might not even apply to the 36-year-old as he owns a 16.567-second win in Mexico City and an 11.116-second triumph at Watkins Glen — the two largest margins of victory at road courses since 1988.
The only driver able to dethrone van Gisbergen this season is Christopher Bell, winner at Circuit of The Americas. His road-course numbers are quietly incredible: top-five finishes in five of the last six (including three runner-ups), a playoff-driver best 175 points scored in 2025 and an average finish of 10th at the Roval. Bell’s inside the top six in four of NASCAR Insights’ five road-course categories.
On the other side of the coin, SVG’s dominant season on the road has come at the expense of Hendrick Motorsports, an organization yet to win on lefts and rights this year after at least one win each season between 2018 and 2024. HMS leads all-time in nearly every major category on road courses: poles, wins, top fives, top 10s, laps led and average finish. But since Kyle Larson’s dominant win at the Roval last fall, the well has run dry.
Winless since before his Indianapolis 500-Coca-Cola 600 Double attempt, Larson owns victories in two of the last nine road-course events but has an average finish of 29th in the other seven. Mechanical issues derailed him early at both Sonoma Raceway and Watkins Glen International this year, but both times, Larson returned to the track and earned the Xfinity Fastest Lap point, despite his NASCAR Insights Speed Rating being outside the top 10.
Like Larson, Chase Elliott is a two-time Roval winner but hasn’t won on a road course since his 2021 playoff triumph. His numbers are still solid, though; Elliott leads all drivers with 11 top fives in the Next Gen car, and his average finish since the start of 2022 is second-best at 9.27 — only to SVG. The 2020 series champion struggled at Watkins Glen, but third-place finishes at Sonoma and Chicago, along with momentum coming off a win last weekend at Kansas Speedway, prove he can contend on Sunday.
But big picture, Toyota continues to have the hot hand overall this postseason, leading 1,124 of 1,681 laps the last five races and placing their drivers inside the top 10 44% of the time. Ford dominated the field two weeks ago at Loudon, but it’s been since 2018 when the manufacturer last won at the Roval with Ryan Blaney.
As the calendar flips to October, intensity ramps up. Tempers flare. Championship aspirations become realizations. But first, with 10 drivers vying for six remaining Round of 8 spots, surviving 109 laps at the Roval could make or break a driver’s season.
TYLER REDDICK: The 2024 Regular Season Champion heads to the Roval in a pretty dire position, sitting 29 points below the cutline. Reddick averaged 40.3 points in each of the last three races there, best of the remaining playoff drivers, and totaled 166 in five road course races in 2025. With three career wins on left- and right-handers, it’s certainly possible the No. 45 driver reverses the skid and earns his first win of the season at the right time.
ROSS CHASTAIN: The first driver below the elimination line at 13 markers back, Chastain’s been solid on road courses … with the Roval as the exception. His average finish is 24th, his worst among active road courses. But he’s one of just eight drivers with over 100 laps led on this track type in the Next Gen car, and with his season hanging in the balance, expect the watermelon farmer to lean on Trackhouse Racing teammate SVG for a turnaround run at the Roval.
JOEY LOGANO: Not known as a road-course racer, the three-time series champion earned top 10s in six of the seven Roval races. He’s scored the second-most points at the track in the Next Gen car, and NASCAR Insights places him first on defense at road courses this season. His plus-13 gap over Chastain for a Round of 8 spot is more than manageable, based on his history.
BUBBA WALLACE: The Brickyard 400 winner has vastly improved at road courses as of late, and the Roval is arguably his best. Wallace averaged 33 points over the last races at the track and has a pair of top 10s in that span. At 26 points below the cutline, he’ll need a strong points day to advance, and that starts with qualifying; if he can stay toward the front, his fourth-best defense rating at road courses evidences that he can stay there.
AJ ALLMENDINGER: Always a threat at road courses, the Kaulig Racing driver earned the 2023 win at the Roval and has finished in the top six in his last three races at the track. All three of his Cup wins have come at road courses, and if a non-playoff driver other than SVG were to win, it could very well be the ‘Dinger.
RACING INSIGHTS’ PROJECTIONS FOR BANK OF AMERICA ROVAL 400:
Racing Insights’ advanced statistical formula incorporates current track, track type, recent performance, team data and pit-crew data to predict a projected winner and provide full race results. Updated on race day with practice and qualifying factored in.
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — A perfect October in the closing stages of the 2025 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season was something Austin Beers knew would be imperative to fend off Justin Bonsignore for his first series championship.
Riverhead Raceway’s Eddie Partridge 256 presented a major hurdle toward Beers’ goal. Bonsignore holds the all-time Modified Tour wins record at Riverhead with 12, while Beers only possessed three top fives at the quarter-mile bullring prior to Saturday evening.
Beers stood tall in the face of immense pressure, denying Bonsignore a 13th series victory at Riverhead while securing his first checkered flag at the Long Island bullring. Being able to outlast Bonsignore at one of his best tracks and consolidate his points lead was a much-needed relief for Beers following a disappointing showing at New Hampshire Motor Speedway two weeks ago.
“We struggled really bad at New Hampshire, and I lost a lot of confidence in myself,” Beers said. “This team just had a bad ass race car. We kind of struggled in practice there, but they did a hell of a job working on it. We were able to get the car to rotate in the center really good there throughout that last long run and were able to pick off Justin [Bonsignore].”
Beers’ 2025 season reflects that of many past Modified Tour champions. Not only has Beers completed every possible lap, but he also does not have any finishes outside the top 10.
Despite the consistency displayed by Beers all year, Bonsignore has remained within striking distance. The four-time Modified Tour champion entered the Eddie Partridge 256 just seven points back from Beers in the standings with momentum on his side following a second place run at New Hampshire.
Bonsignore possesses a combined 27 victories between the final three tracks on the schedule in Riverhead, Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park and Martinsville Speedway. There would be no margin of error for Beers, who got a head start over Bonsignore on Saturday by lining up second on the grid following the redraw.
Although he battled an ill-handling car all evening, Bonsignore took advantage of several cautions to cycle his way toward the front but found himself vulnerable to Beers in the closing stages. With Bonsignore keeping his car glued to the bottom, Beers utilized his fresher tires to overtake Bonsignore.
🫣 Is this the changing of the guards?
Austin Beers overtakes Justin Bonsignore for the lead at @RiverheadRacewy! 😱
Not even a late caution was enough for Bonsignore, who ultimately surrendered second to Ron Silk. Bonsignore knew creativity with strategy would be required to usurp Beers, but he now heads into the final two races knowing he has a slightly larger points deficit to overcome.
“You always want to win, especially at home,” Bonsignore said. “Congrats to Austin; they executed really well and probably had the best car throughout the entire race. It’s so hard to know what the right strategy is going to be, and we short-cutted because we weren’t too good and got the track position, but it just didn’t play out at the end.”
Beers’ victory at Riverhead gives him an advantage over Bonsignore in another regard: multiple wins on the season. He joins Silk, Patrick Emerling and Craig Lutz as the Modified Tour competitors with more than one trip to Victory Lane so far, with Bonsignore’s only triumph occurring earlier this year at Riverhead.
Victories are only one part of the championship formula for Beers. With Bonsignore following him closely in nearly every measurable statistic, Beers knows his team has to stay vigilant while trying to stay ahead of the seasoned Modified veteran at Thompson and Martinsville.
If Beers manages to keep Bonsignore behind him in the standings, he will surpass Ryan Preece as the youngest Modified Tour champion. Now that one major hurdle is cleared, Beers is ready to face Bonsignore head-on for a grueling title fight that could come down to the last lap.
“This is big,” Beers said. “[Riverhead] is a track where we’ve kind of struggled, but we’ve had good runs here and bad runs here. This gives us confidence going into Thompson and pad the points lead a little bit there. We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing. We’ve been consistent all year, and this win is going to help us.”
Completing the top five in the Eddie Partridge 256 were Lutz and Kyle Bonsignore. Eric Goodale, Stephen Kopcik, Trevor Catalano, Matthew Brode and Tommy Catalano rounded out the top-10 finishers.
Two races remain on the 2025 Modified Tour schedule. The penultimate race of the season takes place at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park next Sunday for the World Series 150, which will be broadcasted live on FloRacing.
