Goodyear Racing will bring tested intermediate-track tire setups to Chicagoland Speedway this weekend as the NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series return to the 1.5-mile oval in Joliet, Illinois.
The track has not hosted NASCAR national series competition since 2019, but teams in both series will have recent experience with the Goodyear Racing Eagle tires selected for the weekend. Chicagoland puts similar demands on tires to other intermediate ovals, and Goodyear has chosen setups that have already been used several times this season.
The Cup Series tire setup for Sunday’s eero 400 was most recently used at Nashville Superspeedway. The left-side tire also has been utilized at Michigan International Speedway and Pocono Raceway.
The O’Reilly Series will use a right-side tire that debuted at Charlotte Motor Speedway in May, along with a left-side tire that has raced several times this year, most recently at Nashville. As is customary on tracks 1 mile or longer, teams in both series will run inner liners inside their tires.
“Although teams have not raced at Chicagoland Speedway since 2019, they have lots of data on their Goodyear Racing Eagle tire setups for this weekend,” said Rick Heinrich, Goodyear NASCAR product manager. “The April test gave us valuable information and confirmed that our proven intermediate package is the right choice for this event. With the race falling on the Fourth of July weekend and plenty of excitement around NASCAR’s return to Chicagoland, our focus remains on providing teams with proven performance.”
Tire allotments for each team competing this weekend:
Cup Series: 12 total sets — 8 new sets for the race, 1 for qualifying that transfers to the race and 3 for practice.
O’Reilly Auto Parts Series: 7 total sets — 4 new sets for the race, 1 for qualifying that transfers to the start of the race and 2 for practice.
Growing up going to the race track to watch his dad compete every week of the summer, Mike Lichtfeld admits he “wanted absolutely nothing to do with driving a race car.”
During the week, when it was time to be in the shop, he would rather be with his friends or preparing for his own sports: basketball, football and track.
“That was just always kind of my thing was being an athlete,” Lichtfeld said.
But once he graduated high school in 2005, the opportunities to continue playing sports ended, and Lichtfeld was looking for other ways to keep his competitive juices flowing.
So he decided to give racing a try.
Now, 20 years after his first full-time season racing at Dells Raceway Park in Juneau County, Wisconsin, Lichtfeld has put together one of the track’s most successful careers. He won his first championship in the Pure Stock division in 2007. Two years later, he was the Super Stock champion, and now he’s the four-time defending champion in the track’s Late Model division.
Mike Lichtfeld, the 2025 Dells Raceway Park track champion, receives an award during the NASCAR Regional champions banquet at the Charlotte Convention Center on Nov. 21, 2025. (Photo: Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images)
Lichtfeld won Dells’ late model title last year by 82 points. It was also the track’s first year sanctioned in the NASCAR Local Racing Series, and his combined points between Dells and Wisconsin’s LaCrosse Fairgrounds Speedway helped him win the Midwest Regional Rookie of the Year award.
“We had a really good year last year at Dells Raceway Park,” Lichtfeld said. “It was our first year being NASCAR sanctioned, and that just added a whole other level of excitement, because in addition to racing against the guys at your track, once the season rolled on, we were acquiring the weekly points. You’re paying attention to what was happening in your region and in the country, and it just was a really neat thing. We had a lot of fun with it.”
Lichtfeld’s racing beginnings were with his dad Tom in the shop and pits. Now the roles are reversed.
Lichtfeld and his brother Steve both race at Dells, and the brothers and their dad work alongside each other to prepare their cars. The three also work together for their real jobs, meaning they spend a lot of hours with each other throughout the week.
Lichtfeld said the time is worth it, because going to the track Saturday night is what he calls their weekly vacation.
“We own a plumbing and septic installation business up here in Wisconsin, and we all work there,” he said. “My brother does the indoor plumbing. I do the outdoor stuff with septic installation, selling the jobs, the excavating, and then my dad’s the owner and boss of the company. So we all work together 50, 60 hours a week, and then we’re all in the race shop together another 20 or 30 hours a week, plus Saturdays at the race track. So we all get a pretty good fill of each other, but that really, really makes a team bond and, we’re pretty tight knit in that sense.
“It’s our weekly vacation that we all get to spend Saturday at the race track together, because we don’t hunt, golf, fish, anything like that. It’s all about racing in the summer months.”
They’ve even added more races to the schedule since Dells went NASCAR-sanctioned last year. As a way to gain more points in the regional and national standings, Lichtfeld began travelling to LaCrosse, and he picked up his first feature win at the track on May 30.
“We did it just to kind of break the cycle a little bit of racing at Dells every week and ended up having a decent run up there,” he said. “We just really enjoyed ourselves with the NASCAR sanction.
“It’s definitely an honor to go up to a different race track such as LaCrosse. It’s got so much history at it, and being able to get a victory there is really special.”
Lichtfeld is second in the Dells standings this season with two wins and five top fives in six races. He has one win and three top 10s in three races at LaCrosse. He’s seventh in the NASCAR Local Racing Series Midwest region standings and first in the Wisconsin state standings.
Even though he’s added another track to his schedule, Dells will always be home to Lichtfeld and his family, and he feels extra pride every time he’s able to get back to Victory Lane there.
“It means so much,” he said. “I watched my dad race there for so many years, and my dad was kind of the racer where he had good equipment but not the best, and he always made do with what he had. He always tells stories about back in the day racing where he would qualify into the feature but then take his good tires off and put his old ones on to race the feature just to save money so he had good tires to make the race again next week. So I take that to heart. Everything I do in the race, I try to honor him as much as possible.
“I have a great pride for the Dells Raceway Park and I’m just thankful that (general manager) Jerry Auby’s doing a great job keeping it open because, as we all know, it’s tough business being in the race track owning nowadays. So, it means a ton to be successful at the Dells.”
The biggest goal Lichtfeld wants to accomplish this season is making it back to the NASCAR banquet in Charlotte, N.C., this winter. He said following the points for multiple championships has changed the way he drives for the better.
“You’ve really got to look at the big picture of things and have in mind that you’ve really got to stack those top fives, top threes to gain the NASCAR points,” he said. “But that’s probably a good thing for me, because I spent my career not really worrying about the points as much and would kind of get myself in trouble sometimes, so maybe in a way it calmed me down a little bit.
“The banquet we were lucky enough to go to last year was top notch and such a cool experience that it’d be an honor to get to go back there again.”
The key to getting back there, Lichtfeld said, is continuing to put in the time in the race shop and staying prepared — while also remaining humble.
“We’ve got to keep working and can’t get lazy,” he said. “It’s hard to get to the top, but we don’t want to slip down the slope and lose ground to anybody. We just have a goal to do as best we can each and every night, not beat ourselves. The points will shake out where they shake out. Obviously the only thing that we can control is what we do on a weekly basis. We can’t control what happens in Minnesota or Oklahoma or anywhere else in the country, but if we put a good product on race track and I do a good job driving, hopefully things will shake out and we’ll look at that stuff come September when it gets closer to be in the end.”
Lichtfeld doesn’t have the same opportunities to play football and basketball that he did 20 years ago in high school, but he’s OK with that now. He’s found a new competition, and he’s so successful, he doesn’t see himself quitting any time soon.
“Once high school ended and I didn’t have those opportunities to be competitive, racing stepped in to fulfill my competitive needs,” he said. “And it’s been history ever since then. It’s definitely in my blood now.”
NASCAR.com’s Pat DeCola ranks the top 20 Cup Series drivers competing for the 2026 championship after Shane van Gisbergen’s win at Sonoma Raceway and before Sunday’s eero 400 at Chicagoland Speedway (6 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Analysis: Hamlin picked a pretty convenient week to have his first truly rough finish in a while (and worst since the Daytona 500 — in February). The No. 11 came home 26th at Sonoma after spinning from seventh on a Lap 64 restart, but Tyler Reddick’s day was even worse, handing Hamlin the regular-season points lead by a single marker (also for the first time since Reddick claimed it after winning the Daytona 500). That doesn’t make Sonoma a “good” result for him, but it does make it survivable with a silver lining — and surviving bad weeks at the exact moment your closest rival stumbles is, at the very least, fortuitous. Chicagoland is a much better place for Hamlin to steady the whole thing, too. He won there in 2015 and owns seven top 10s in 14 starts at the 1.5-mile track with a level of experience there that significantly outweighs the field, so the first trip back since 2019 should quickly remind everyone why he’s wearing the crown for now.
Analysis: Reddick’s Sonoma started badly and got worse from there. A power-steering issue sent the No. 45 in for repairs early, and while he eventually returned five laps down, the damage was already done, as it resulted in a 36th-place finish that cost him the points lead for the first time all season. The five wins, 12 top 10s and overall 2026 profile still keep him firmly in the top two, but the untouchable version of Reddick’s season is officially gone. Chicagoland doesn’t offer any Cup history to lean on, either, which makes this weekend a little more of a pure-form test than a track-stat bounce-back spot. He’s still one of the two standards of the season, but now he’s the hunter instead of the rabbit being chased.
Analysis: Blaney’s Sonoma race was quite useful for No. 12, as a top-six finish on a road course has historically been about his best-case scenario on these types of tracks. He finished sixth, grabbed a Stage 2 point, led a lap through the pit cycle and kept himself comfortably third in the standings while the top two continue to trade haymakers. The gap to Hamlin and Reddick remains substantial, but Blaney is building a very sturdy third lane behind them and could theoretically strike before the regular season is up. Chicagoland backs that up better than most upcoming tracks might, too. In four Cup starts there, Blaney owns a 9.8 average finish, one top five and two top 10s. If the No. 12 is going to turn “reliable” into “dangerous” again, this is a reasonable place to start.
Analysis: Larson finally has something resembling week-to-week stability again, and that matters tremendously in this Chase system. He finished fourth at Sonoma after spending most of the day in the top five, briefly led late through the final pit cycle and now has five top-five finishes in his last six races. This no longer looks like a winless drought but a countdown until he unleashes the summer afterburners and jets off. Chicagoland is exactly the kind of place that could serve as the launching pad. Larson has never won a Cup race there, but he owns four top fives, five top 10s and a ridiculous 6.2 average finish in six starts. If there is a “how has he not won yet?” track, it’s probably this one. If it had remained on the schedule the past several years, this certainly would not still be a question.
Analysis: Gibbs turned in the strongest race of anyone not named SVG at Sonoma. The No. 54 started from the pole, swept both stages, led 31 laps and finished third, putting together the kind of complete road-course weekend that he needs to remain capable of contending while he continues rounding into form elsewhere. The 2026 emergence overall is real, though — we’re at the halfway mark, and he’s fourth in points, with three stage wins and 139 stage points. There is nothing prospect-y about that anymore. Chicagoland is a blank Cup sheet for Gibbs, but that might not matter much with the way Joe Gibbs Racing is operating, particularly on the intermediates. The next step is obvious and getting louder: No. 54 is good enough to win again, and soon.
Analysis: Elliott held sixth in these rankings, as Sonoma was not a convincing argument to move him back up. He finished 17th after spinning in Turn 6, scored no stage points and watched Gibbs, Larson and SVG all make louder statements on a track type where the No. 9 typically expects to matter more. The broader season is still strong enough, with two wins and eight top 10s while sitting sixth in points, but the edge has dulled a bit lately. Chicagoland is a much better setup for a correction, however. Elliott owns two top fives, two top 10s, 117 laps led and an 8.8 average finish in four Cup starts there. If he’s going to remind everyone he belongs closer to the front of this list, the track gives him a real opening.
Analysis: Buescher’s Sonoma was a rare recent week in which the No. 17 didn’t get much out of the day, on one of his better track types, to boot. He finished 19th, lost a bit of ground to the cutline and gave back two spots in these rankings after briefly cracking the top five. Still, this is not a collapse — he remains seventh in points and 129 above the cutline even without a win, which says plenty about how much weekly value he has banked. Chicagoland, historically, does not exactly scream automatic rebound, though he was in a much different place in his career while these stats were accumulated. Still, Buescher has four Cup starts there with no top 10s and a 23.8 average finish. The season-long floor is still trustworthy, but this weekend will test how portable that really is.
Analysis: Hocevar’s Sonoma was a bit quieter than San Diego, and that might have been the best thing for him. He started second, ran near the front early, finished 11th and avoided turning another high-upside day into a headline for the wrong reason. He remains eighth in these rankings, eighth in points and 120 points above the cutline, which is still a pretty wild sentence for this stage of the season for a driver who entered the year with zero Cup wins and no guarantee the first would come this season, which it did. Chicagoland will be new territory for him in Cup, but a worn 1.5-mile track should not scare the No. 77 team given the intermediate-track gains Spire has shown all year.
Analysis: Briscoe jumps two spots because Sonoma was not just a good race for No. 19; it was nearly season-changing. He finished second to what appeared to be an untouchable SVG by a mere 0.357 seconds, kept pressure on the best road-course driver in the field all the way to the end and briefly looked like he might have a shot before overcooking Turn 1 in the closing laps. That one stings for sure, but it also reinforces that Briscoe, a Championship 4 driver last fall, is more than just hanging around here. Chicagoland is interesting because he has no Cup history there, but he did win an ARCA Menards Series race at the track in 2016. Add that to five top fives and seven top 10s this season, and this feels less like a strong recent run and more like a 2026 identity finally forming.
Analysis: Bell needed a clean result in the worst way, and Sonoma finally gave him one. The No. 20 finished fifth, scoring points in both stages and recovering from a messy pit stop where he left with the left-front wheel not tight and had to back up. Given the recent run of engine trouble, wrist drama, fuel heartbreak and general nonsense, a top five counts as a deep, midway-point exhale. Chicagoland is a place without Cup history for Bell, as well, but the track still carries a nice little footnote: he won the ARCA race there in 2017, and there’s little reason why he won’t be fast. The speed has rarely been the issue. If the bad-luck tax is finally easing up, Bell could climb fast, especially as he continues to heal and with a “normal” track this weekend.
Analysis: SVG did exactly what he was supposed to do at Sonoma (and what he intended to do at San Diego … ), and that almost makes it harder to appreciate how absurd and impressive it actually was. He won from sixth with a car he was very much not happy with on Saturday, led 74 of 110 laps, posted 23 fastest laps by the late stages and spent basically the entire race in control before holding off Briscoe, who had a faster car, at the finish. That moved him back above the cutline by 36 points and gave him his second Cup win of the season. The reason he is still only 11th is simple: Chicagoland — along with the rest of the schedule — has no right-hand turns. There is no Cup history for him there, of course, and the next question is how much of this momentum survives away from the road courses. His ceiling on those tracks is literally non-existent. His full-season ceiling, however, is still being established.
Analysis: Suárez took a small rankings hit because Sonoma — a track he’s won at — never got going the way it needed to. An early tire concern sent him to pit road from deep in the field, and he never fully recovered on the way to a 31st-place finish that cost him ground to the cutline. The good news is the overall position remains sturdy enough, with No. 7 still ninth in points and 95 markers above the bubble. Chicagoland is at least not a total mystery, either. Suárez owns a 15.7 average finish in three Cup starts there, which is fine, if not especially spicy. The mission this week is simple: get back to collecting useful points before a quiet wobble turns into a louder one.
Analysis: Byron’s Sonoma was fine — normally a positive adjective as it pertains to Wine Country — but “fine” is not really where the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet expects to live. He finished 12th, led a lap through the pit cycle and gained enough to move up one spot in the standings, but the larger picture remains frustrating for a driver who should feel more dangerous than his week-to-week finishes in 2026 suggest. Chicagoland gives him one of the better cases for a rebound, though. Byron has only two Cup starts there, early on in his career, but he owns a top 10, a 14.0 average finish and a respectable 9.5 average start. The sample is old and small, but the broader point still holds: this is a 1.5-mile chance for a Hendrick driver who badly needs a more convincing summer and should be heating up soon, in theory.
Analysis: Wallace gives back four spots after Sonoma, which was not a shock so much as a reminder that road courses, while he’s improved on them lately, remain his pain point. After the San Diego runner-up raised the expectations, No. 23 qualified into the trouble portion of the pack, furthered the issue by going to the rear for unapproved adjustments, got bounced around during the race and ultimately finished 22nd, which honestly isn’t as poor of a result as it was looking like. He remains 55 points above the cutline, so there’s no need to panic, but the prove-it nature of his jump last week did not exactly get answered. Chicagoland doesn’t offer a huge safety net, either. Wallace has two Cup starts there, no top 10s and a 24.0 average finish. The momentum isn’t gone, but it has taken a pretty obvious dent.
Analysis: Preece keeps inching upward, and it no longer feels accidental or circumstantial. He followed the San Diego stage-win surge with an eighth-place finish at Sonoma, giving the No. 60 team another badly needed points day and a 13-point cushion above the cutline as Preece rounds into a respectable road racer. The early-season penalty still hangs over the math, but Preece has done a pretty good job of making sure it did not define the whole season. There isn’t much Chicagoland on the resume for obvious reasons — one Cup start, 28th-place finish — so this one leans more on current form than track history. That is not the worst thing, because his current form is the best argument he has right now.
Analysis: Cindric continues to live on the narrowest part of the bubble, which is a stressful but still reasonable place to be, given his three-time champion teammate is below it. He finished 13th at Sonoma, scored Stage 2 points and remains 12 points above the cutline with eight races left before The Chase. The No. 2 team still does not feel especially explosive — even teammate Ryan Blaney has had trouble converting obvious speed into wins this year — but it’s doing just enough to stay upright while others wobble. Chicagoland brings no Cup history for Cindric, making the Penske baseline more relevant than anything else. And in 2026 that’s lower than it historically is, so it could be an uphill battle this weekend.
Analysis: Jones drops three spots in the standings because Sonoma put a real dent in what had been one of the better bubble pushes of the past month. He went to the rear after unapproved adjustments, finished 23rd and slipped 12 points below the cutline after briefly looking like he had grabbed firm control of a Chase spot. The Legacy Motor Club surge still hasn’t disappeared, but the cushion sure has. Chicagoland offers a sneaky good lifeline, though. Jones has two top 10s in three Cup starts there, plus O’Reilly Auto Parts Series wins at the track in 2015 and 2016. If there is a place for No. 43 to stop the slide quickly, this is a pretty good candidate.
Analysis: Keselowski moves up two spots, but this still does not feel especially healthy. He finished 15th at Sonoma, a step forward on paper, yet still lost ground to the cutline and sits 25 points out with time starting to get uncomfortable. The encouraging part is that Chicagoland might be the best track on the board for him right now. Keselowski, on top of having an experience edge on the field like Hamlin, owns two Cup wins, five top fives, nine top 10s and an 8.8 average finish in 11 starts there. If the veteran’s program is going to reinsert itself into The Chase picture, it almost has to look alive this weekend. His track history is too good for anything less.
Analysis: Allmendinger’s Sonoma wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t the kind of road-course swing he needed on a track he needed to maximize. He finished 16th, lost five points to the cutline and remains 26 points outside the provisional Chase field as the schedule moves away from one of his best disciplines for the remainder of the season. That’s the problem. The road stretch kept him relevant, but it did not fully change the math, and Chicagoland does not help much historically, either. Allmendinger has 10 Cup starts there with no top 10s and a 21.3 average finish. The door is still cracked, but he may have missed his best chance to kick it open.
Analysis: Logano falls to the final spot, and even that feels a little generous given the standard attached to the No. 22. Sonoma ended with a 24th-place finish, another quiet points day and a 31-point deficit to the cutline, leaving the three-time champ in a slow-motion fight just to stay relevant amid one of the most challenging seasons of his career. Chicagoland is the hope, and at least it’s a credible one. Logano has three top fives, seven top 10s, a pole and an 11.5 average finish in 11 Cup starts there, plus two O’Reilly wins at the track. If Penske is going to drag this season back toward normalcy, Chicagoland is a logical place to start. If it doesn’t happen there, the questions get a whole lot louder.
After winding through Wine Country at Sonoma Raceway, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series heads to Chicagoland Speedway for the first time since 2019 on Saturday (5:30 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The race will be the 20th points-paying event of the 2026 O’Reilly season.
This will be the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series’ first time back in Joliet, Illinois since 2019 and will be a bit of a homecoming for points leader Justin Allgaier who is 207 markers ahead of Jesse Love in the standings.
Cup Series mainstays Connor Zilisch (No. 1 JR Motorsports), Chase Elliott (No. 88 JR Motorsports) and Cole Custer (No. 0 SS-Greenlight Racing) help make up the 38 cars entered in this weekend’s event. Custer is also the most recent winner at Chicagoland.
After wrapping up its California road-course run through Naval Base Coronado and Sonoma Raceway, the NASCAR Cup Series will head to the Midwest and Chicagoland Speedway on Sunday (6 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The visit to the 1.5-mile venue will be the first since 2019 and will act as the second leg of the 2026 In-Season Challenge.
Fresh off his first-round upset of No. 1 seed Tyler Reddick, 2019 Chicagoland winner Alex Bowman will take on Austin Cindric in Round 2. That won’t be the only marquee matchup, though, as Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson and William Byron face off and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Ty Gibbs and Chase Briscoe go at it.
A week-plus removed from scoring his first career Cup Series win at Naval Base Coronado, Corey Heim returns to drive the No. 67 23XI Racing Toyota. JJ Yeley also returns to the fold this weekend to make up the 38 cars entered into this weekend’s race.
The first of five weeks of head-to-head battles has trimmed the In-Season Challenge field in half after an eventful Sunday at Sonoma Raceway, and zero perfect brackets remain in the pool of fan predictions. The 16 drivers with hopes of claiming the $1 million prize head this weekend to a Sunday showdown at Chicagoland Speedway (6 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), which returns to the NASCAR Cup Series circuit for the first time in seven years.
Here’s where things stand after Challenge Round 1 at Sonoma:
Sonoma race winner: Shane van Gisbergen secured a weekend sweep of the Cup Series and O’Reilly Auto Parts Series events on the 1.99-mile road course, fending off a stout challenge from Chase Briscoe to prevail in Sunday’s main event. SVG led 74 of the 110 laps in Trackhouse Racing’s No. 97 Chevrolet, landing his second win of the Cup Series season and his second straight at Sonoma. He advanced to the In-Season Challenge’s second round over No. 19 seed Ryan Preece, who placed a respectable eighth.
Who advances to Round 2
Advancing with the 14th-seeded van Gisbergen to the next round are: (2) Denny Hamlin, (3) Ryan Blaney, (4) Chase Elliott, (5) Ty Gibbs, (6) Kyle Larson, (7) Chris Buescher, (9) Carson Hocevar, (10) Christopher Bell, (11) William Byron, (12) Chase Briscoe, (15) Erik Jones, (16) Austin Cindric, (20) Michael McDowell, (25) Todd Gilliland, and (32) Alex Bowman.
The top upset from first-round action was Bowman, who rolled into the Round of 16 with a 10th-place effort after top-seeded Tyler Reddick stumbled with mechanical trouble and finished last. The outcome marked the second consecutive year that the lowest seed has advanced, and he’ll face off with Austin Cindric in the second round. Bowman is also the most recent race winner at Chicagoland, where he netted his first Cup Series victory in 2019.
Matchup of the week
(No. 6) Kyle Larson vs. (No. 11) William Byron: This intrasquad matchup of Hendrick Motorsports teammates has some serious star power. A pair of the best on intermediate tracks, Larson and Byron will square off in Round 2 at Chicagoland — both coming off relatively decisive first-round wins at Sonoma Raceway. Larson stomped Riley Herbst in Round 1, finishing fourth while the 23XI Racing driver placed 30th. Meanwhile, Byron finished 12th at the road course compared to 21st for opponent Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Larson has a momentum advantage, riding a streak of five top fives in the last six races. But as the 2026 campaign inches toward The Chase, this head-to-head battle could serve as an important turning point for the Hendrick organization with both drivers looking for their first wins of the season.
Who’s up
Ty Gibbs, No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Almost the only thing Gibbs didn’t do Sunday at Sonoma was win, assembling a sizable 54-point day — second only to SVG’s 63 — with a sweep of the stages from the pole position and a third-place result. That equaled a convincing first-round victory over No. 28 seed Austin Dillon, who finished 27th. Gibbs’ path to a second straight In-Season Challenge title will have to go through teammate Chase Briscoe, who makes for an enticing Round 2 matchup after a stellar runner-up finish Sunday.
Who’s down
Todd Gilliland, No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford. Gilliland survived a bumpy Sonoma ride, including a pair of run-ins with 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace and Riley Herbst in Stage 2. He finished where he started in 29th place, but it was just enough to advance over 31st-finishing Daniel Suárez, a former Sonoma winner whose race went awry after a first-stage flat. Gilliland is among a handful of drivers heading into unknown territory for their first Cup Series start at Chicagoland, and he’ll face off with No. 9 seed Carson Hocevar in a second-round test.
A mid-week show awaits the stars and cars of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour as Seekonk Speedway welcomes back the series for the running of the Firecracker 150 presented by the Bethesda Leadership Group (Wednesday, 8 p.m. ET on FloRacing and the NASCAR Channel).
The Modified Tour’s second Seekonk race of the season doubles as the opening salvo of the Whelen Midsummer Championship. The three-race miniseries, featuring events at Seekonk, Claremont Motorsports Park and Monadnock Speedway, offers a bonus program for competing teams totaling $25,000.
Wednesday’s race marks the Tour’s 15th visit to Seekonk and the second of the season. Jon McKennedy captured the most recent Tour event held at the facility in May. He’s one of 11 drivers to earn Tour wins at the track, a list that also includes Matt Hirschman, Doug Coby, Justin Bonsignore, Reggie Ruggiero and Jerry Marquis, among others.
Tickets to Wednesday’s Firecracker 150 presented by the Bethesda Leadership Group are available here. Below is everything you need to know about the seventh race of the 2026 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season.
Jon McKennedy won the most recent NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour event at Seekonk Speedway in May. (Photo: Jaiden Tripi/NASCAR)
Firecracker 150 presented by the Bethesda Leadership Group at Seekonk Speedway
A well-known fact: Race-car drivers love racing for extra money.
Starting Wednesday at Seekonk Speedway, the stars of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour will get to do just that.
Thanks to JDV Productions and Whelen Engineering, an extra $25,000 will be available to teams as part of the inaugural Whelen Midsummer Championship. The three-race miniseries, which features Wednesday’s event at Seekonk as well as the races at Claremont Motorsports Park (July 10) and Monadnock Speedway (July 25), is the spiritual successor to JDV’s Whelen Short Track Cup.
The champion of the Whelen Midsummer Championship will be determined by the points each driver scores during the three-race miniseries. The champion will pocket $5,000 from the $25,000 purse. Should any driver win all three races as part of the Whelen Midsummer Challenge, he’ll earn an extra $10,000.
Based on recent performance, the favorite for the Whelen Midsummer Challenge is undoubtably Jon McKennedy. The 2022 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion has won two of the last three races on the schedule, including the most recent Seekonk race in May.
Another likely contender is championship leader Stephen Kopcik, who led a race-high 81 laps in May at Seekonk before fading to second at the finish. He holds an eight-point edge in the series standings on another likely contender for Wednesday, defending NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion Austin Beers. Though he has yet to win this year, Beers has an average finish of sixth, better than any driver so far this season.
Doug Coby, a six-time Modified Tour champion, is scheduled to make his third start of the season Wednesday in the No. 28 for Jett Motorsports. He finished ninth in the most recent Seekonk event, his first top-10 with Jett Motorsports. Matt Hirschman, the only three-time series winner at Seekonk, is also entered and should be considered among the contenders Wednesday.
Other notable entrants include Patrick Emerling, Trevor Catalano, Tyler Rypkema, Tommy Catalano, Eric Goodale, Chase Dowling and Paulie Hartwig III, among others. The full entry list for Wednesday’s race is available here.
Jon McKennedy has won two of the last three NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour races entering Wednesday’s Firecracker 150 at Seekonk Speedway. (Photo: Jaiden Tripi/NASCAR)
SCHEDULE: Wednesday, July 1: Practice from 3 – 3:30 p.m. ET … Final practice from 3:40 to 4:10 p.m. ET … American Racer Pole Award qualifying at 5:30 p.m. ET … Start of the Firecracker 150 presented by the Bethesda Leadership Group at 8 p.m. ET (150 Laps / 49.95 Miles)
QUALIFYING: Two consecutive qualifying laps. Faster lap determines qualifying position. Adjustments or repairs may not be made on the vehicle after the vehicle has taken the green flag at the start/finish line. NASCAR reserves the right to have more than one vehicle engage in qualifying runs at the same time. Starting field for the Firecracker 150 presented by the Bethesda Leadership Group is limited to 28 starters including Provisional Positions.
TIRE ALLOTMENT: The maximum tire allotment available for this event is eight (8) tires per team. All tires used for qualifying and the race must be purchased at the track and scanned by NASCAR Officials, unless otherwise approved in advance by the Series Director. Four (4) tires must be used for qualifying and to begin the race. All qualifying tires must remain in impound until released by NASCAR Officials. The remaining tire allotment may be used for practice tires during the event. The tire change rule is zero (0) tires, any position for this event.
RE-DRAW PROCEDURE: The fastest qualifier will spin the wheel to determine the number of drivers that will re-draw for their starting positions: 4, 6, 8 or 10 positions will re-draw. Once the fastest qualifier spins the wheel, NASCAR will have the various buckets ready to immediately start the re-draw procedure. Driver will re-draw in their qualifying order after qualifying has been completed (1 through 10, or however many are applicable). The pole position and/or any bonus point(s), if applicable, will be awarded to the fastest qualifier and will be the pole of record. If, due to adverse conditions, qualifying is canceled, the field will be set in accordance with the 2026 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Rule Book. The re-draw procedure will still take place regardless of how the field is set.
SONOMA, Calif. — For the first time all season, there is a new leader in the clubhouse in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Placing 26th in Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway gave Denny Hamlin the regular-season championship lead by the slimmest of margins — one point. He tallied 11 points while Tyler Reddick, who has been in command of the series lead since winning the Daytona 500 four-and-a-half months ago, drove around with power steering issues throughout the race, finishing last in the 36-car field.
“We don’t really know what the issue was,” Billy Scott, crew chief of the No. 45 Toyota told NASCAR.com on pit road. “It sounds like we were able to help it some, but not fully. I think we missed an opportunity to have a solid top-10 day, had decent speed, got the fastest lap and did what we could. Certainly, disappointed to not get many points on the day.”
While sitting idly on pit road at the end of the opening stage for six excruciating laps, the No. 45 bunch went under the hood to assess the issue. Through a pair of caution flags, Reddick was able to get within four laps of the lead, three laps behind any other competitor.
“It was just a very odd issue,” Reddick told TNT Sports following the race. “Everything seemed fine when we left the pit stall that first green-flag cycle, we just had some issues with the steering and the power steering going in and out. I didn’t know what was going on, if we had a wheel issue or what was going on. It was really hard to make any kind of lap time with it.
“It’s so hard to say, in hindsight, if we made the right decision to work on it. I definitely don’t think I would have been within seconds of the pace. Either way, we had a difficult road ahead.”
Hindsight also would have worked in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team’s favor Sunday. Hamlin was a contender throughout the road-course race, spending much of the opening two stages inside the top six. The plan, if he remained in contention, was to sacrifice stage points by flipping both stages in exchange for track position over the final stint, which covered roughly half the race.
But Hamlin was tagged from behind by Carson Hocevar in a restart on Lap 64 entering Turn 7. The No. 11 car looped around in the dirt, returning to the race at the rear of the field. With a damaged splitter hindering performance, Hamlin gained nine positions for the remainder of the event to clock in 26th.
“Extremely frustrated. We put a lot of time into it,” Hamlin said of the finish. “If you get wiped out in one corner, it changes the complete result.”
Chris Gayle, crew chief for the No. 11, knew the possible repercussions of not collecting stage points. If anything went haywire during the final stage, the chances of having a minuscule points day were on the table. Hamlin kept his composure, however, and made something out of nothing.
“It’s frustrating, but what do you do about it other than the drivers have to handle that stuff themselves and the guys behind should be more cognizant and be aware,” Gayle told NASCAR.com. “I realize some of that is the guys behind seeing what’s coming from behind, and it’s either me spin somebody, or I get [spun], potentially. It’s kind of chaotic with what happens here. From the crew guy side, what can you do about it?
“I’m more proud of the fact that Denny stayed in it at the end, we picked up [nine] spots, he got by [Ty Dillon] so we weren’t eliminated from (the In-Season Challenge). We picked up enough points after that to get the points lead. That’s the only thing you can do and focus on.”
Hocevar took blame for the incident, though knew he got hammered from behind. He was afraid he was going to get accused of fixing the race as he was praising Dillon throughout the week, believing he would advance to the second round of the In-Season Challenge.
“I just know I got hit,” Hocevar said. “I was going to be left, and I was looking in my mirror and they were all lining up, and I said, ‘If I don’t get right, I’m probably going to get spun.’ I remember getting hit and full-rocked right.”
Yet Hamlin seized the championship lead for the first time in any regular season since a runner-up finish in June 2024 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway. He has climbed from a 129-point deficit to Reddick in the last six races, which included a three-race winning streak for the first time in his career.
And when it came to road courses, a distinct advantage for Reddick, it was Hamlin who came out with the upper hand through the inaugural event at Naval Base Coronado and Sonoma, gaining 20 points on the No. 45 car in the last two races.
“They’ve had misfortune and today we had misfortunate,” Hamlin said. “We just got to race it out. I don’t know where the points are, but I don’t control anything. As we see, things can happen.”
Gayle took a measured approach, recognizing the No. 11 team had its back against the wall over the past two weeks. The team responded by overcoming one of its biggest weaknesses in climbing to the top of the mountain.
“If you would have written that down going into this stretch, we would have been happy with that regardless of the finishes or what happens. It’s kind of sour today because we thought we had a lot better car. Maybe we could have finished eighth or so last week, but this week, we felt like we could have finished in the top six, getting caught up in someone else’s stuff and got punted from behind in that chaos.”
Jonathan Bachman | Getty Images
The No. 45 team knows that with eight races remaining in the regular season, plenty of racing is still to be completed before any driver gets a 25-point advantage leading into The Chase.
“I think the hope and plan coming into this was to gain ground,” Reddick told reporters on Saturday. “I guess it can be won or lost on any given race when all the races are in the books, and you’re able to go back and look at it, but there’s still a lot of racing.
“We’re right in the mix, and it’s very much still there for either one of us. Obviously, anyone else back there, if we hit a slump, could close the ground if they win some races. I think there’s a couple of tracks coming up where I think Denny could have the upper hand from the experience side of things, but there’s a lot of racing left.”
Scott quipped: “The reality is there is a reset coming in eight weeks, so this is good practice for that. We’re going to keep focusing on what we can do, and we think that’s going out to win more races before we get to The Chase.”
Sunday was a double-whammy for Reddick, however. Alex Bowman took the checkered flag in 10th, his first top-10 finish since rounding out the podium at Texas Motor Speedway nearly two months ago. For the second consecutive year, the No. 1 seed was bounced from the In-Season Challenge in the opening week.
Bowman played the role of this year’s UMBC or Fairleigh Dickinson, stunning the tournament’s top overall seed.
“To be honest with you, after the last two months we’ve had, it feels good to have a solid day at the race track and finish halfway decent,” Bowman told NASCAR.com. “Obviously, it’s been pretty horrendous the last two months. It feels good to have a good day; it’s been a while since we’ve had an enjoyable day at the race track.
“The bracket was what it was. I didn’t have any idea that we were going to beat Reddick, and I caught up to him pretty early in the race and thought we might have a shot, the car was pretty good.”
With Dillon having a power steering issue of his own in the closing laps, Hamlin scooted by with 11 laps remaining, assuring the top two seeds didn’t go down in Week 1 in consecutive years.
SONOMA, Calif. — Chase Briscoe nearly defeated road-course king Shane van Gisbergen in the final laps of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Sonoma Raceway, but ultimately settled for runner-up.
With a long 57-lap stint to the finish, it forced drivers to make their final pit stops of the afternoon under green-flag conditions. Briscoe, running second at the time, exited the 1.99-mile racing surface at Lap 81 for four fresh Goodyear tires and fuel. Van Gisbergen followed one lap later.
Despite the time gained in the closing laps and a last-ditch push into Turn 11, Briscoe saw the Kiwi take the checkered flag out the front windshield for the second year in a row at the California road course.
“Last year, I felt like I never really knew what he had,” Briscoe said. “Today, like 15 or so to go, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s letting me catch him and he’ll just drive away’, and then I realized I was like, man, I’m actually better here, like I could see him struggling. I could tell the last 10 laps, it was everything he had. I just, I made a mistake with like three or four to go getting into Turn 1.
“Just have to be absolutely perfect to beat him, and I wasn’t perfect. I thought I definitely had the superior car. I just didn’t do as good of a job as he did driving.”
As the laps ticked down, Briscoe was encouraged by his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team to conserve rear tires while van Gisbergen struggled on pace. With four laps to go, Briscoe shaved the deficit down to under a second before missing Turn 1, causing him to lose an additional half second.
Briscoe credited his braking during the final run that gave him a fighting chance to pull off the upset on van Gisbergen.
“I just kept pushing harder and harder and harder,” Briscoe said. “I didn’t feel like I was really that bad under braking, but then at the end I just kept pushing it, like I said, extremely hard. I knew that was the one thing, if I could just try to make him get pressured in, and I honestly kind of baited him into it there on the white flag into (Turn) 7. He kind of missed, and I just unfortunately missed with him.”
But his second consecutive Sonoma runner-up shouldn’t come as a surprise. His crew chief, James Small, has a knack for success in Wine Country.
Combined with Briscoe and the retired Martin Truex Jr., the No. 19 team leader has scored four top-three results in his last six Sonoma events, including a win with Truex in 2023.
While not revealing his secret to success in Northern California, Small credited Briscoe for his growing ability to navigate the course and compete for wins.
“It’s like training a dog, and it’s just trying to show him that it can be done,” Small told NASCAR.com. “Just repetition and we’ve got the perfect playbook by seeing Shane, who’s honestly one of the best drivers in the world when it comes to managing his stuff. I think if we could have had track position on him there at the end … we had a better long-run car. Credit to Chase for really not going too hard there and managing that whole run.
“It’s frustrating to finish second again here and would have been nice to be back in the winner’s circle.”
Entering the middle of the summer stretch, Briscoe has established some consistency following a rough start to 2026.
Once outside The Chase picture after Watkins Glen, the Indiana native has climbed to 11th across the last six races and has built a 79-point cushion to the cutline.
Briscoe matched his season-best result Sunday (second at EchoPark Speedway in February), but with a goose egg still in the win column for 2026, there will certainly be a bitter taste leaving Wine Country despite nearly conquering the king of the road.
“I think that Shane is one of the greatest road-course drivers in the world,” Briscoe said. “I felt like I was playing one-on-one against Michael Jordan. I didn’t have the lead, but I had every opportunity to beat him, and I blew it.”
Tyler Reddick, who entered Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series event at Sonoma Raceway with an eight-point lead in the standings, fell multiple laps down after Stage 1 with a mechanical issue.
After qualifying 11th on Saturday, Reddick faded throughout the 25-lap opening stint at the 1.99-mile road course, complaining to his No. 45 23XI Racing team about power steering issues. He finished Stage 1 30th before coming down pit road for repairs, losing six laps to the field. He gained two laps back at the Stage 2 end, with a caution for debris soon after.
“It’s disappointing. We don’t really know what the issue was,” No. 45 crew chief Billy Scott told NASCAR.com. “It sounds like we were able to help it some, but not fully. I think we missed an opportunity to have a solid top-10 day, had decent speed and got the fastest lap and did what we could. Certainly disappointed to not get many points on the day.”
Speaking to TNT Sports after the race, Reddick explained that he was unsure whether to let the issue ride or spend laps on pit road diagnosing it.
“It’s so hard to say, in hindsight, if we made the right decision or not to work on it,” Reddick said. “Either way, we had a difficult road ahead, so I don’t know. I do feel good that it was nice we did decide to pit there, work on it, so we were able to get the Xfinity Fastest Lap out of the day, at least.”
Reddick, a California native, won five of the first nine races this season, including the season-opening Daytona 500. He led the series by as many as 129 points after Watkins Glen International in May. But after finishing 36th at Sonoma, he surrendered the points lead to Denny Hamlin for the first time this season.
“The reality is there is a reset coming in eight weeks or whatever it is, so this is good practice for that,” Scott said. “We’re going to keep focusing on what we can do, and we think that’s going out to win more races before we get to The Chase.”
Despite gaining the points lead, Hamlin had his own issues. Entering Sonoma with wins in three of the last four races, he went spinning on a restart and plummeted through the field after showing early top 10 speed. He unofficially leads the series by one marker heading to Chicagoland Speedway next Sunday (6 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“We got pretty fortunate today,” Reddick said. “[Hamlin] was running really, really good. Something happened, don’t really know what it was, but something coming out of the dirt right in front of me there. So all things considered, for the issues we had, we were very fortunate to really only lose nine points on the day to Denny, finishing dead last.”
A well-known fact: Race-car drivers love racing for extra money.
