The NASCAR Cup and Xfinity series take on the famed Brickyard this weekend for their annual stop at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, while the Craftsman Truck Series is back in action at nearby Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park. Bookmark this page and come back often for your race-week essentials — from links to qualifying order, average practice speeds, results and more.
Race day: Sunday at 2 p.m. ET on TNT Sports. The categories listed below will be filled out with links as the information becomes available.
Tires: Fifteen sets (11 race sets plus one set transferred from qualifying). Teams will also have three sets for practice.
Note: A 50-minute practice session scheduled for Friday was canceled due to weather. Teams will have a 25-minute session Saturday at 2 p.m. ET before qualifying.
Race day: Friday at 8 p.m. ET on FS1. The categories listed below will be filled out with links as the information becomes available.
Tires: Five sets for dry conditions (three race sets plus one set transferred from qualifying). Teams will also have one set for practice and three sets of wet-weather tires for Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.
Larson wheeled his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to the crown-jewel victory in the 2024 edition of the event at the historic Indianapolis Motor Speedway, carving through the field with more fuel than most. But that was last year. A new task awaits on Sunday (2 p.m. ET, TNT Sports/truTV, HBO Max, IMS Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“Just happy to be back,” Larson said Friday before practice. “Hopefully, our car is good again. I believe it should be fast, if not better than it was last year. So hopefully have a good practice, good qualifying tomorrow and execute your race on Sunday.”
Despite his California roots, Larson is linked to Indy more than any other active NASCAR Cup Series driver, thanks in large part to his 2024 and 2025 attempts of the Memorial Day Double — competing in the storied Indianapolis 500 as well as the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on the same day.
Neither attempt went to plan. Year 1 was marred by weather delays and a speeding penalty in the Indianapolis 500 that sank his finish, with the weather in both Indy and Charlotte ruining his chances of getting behind the wheel of his Cup car. This year’s try was arguably more heartbreaking. Time allotted him to compete in both events, but crashes in both races after the intense logistical planning and preparation ultimately soured the experience.
Returning to the Racing Capital of the World gives Larson an opportunity to put those disappointments behind him for good.
“It’s great to be back here in Indy and back in the stock car,” Larson said. “Hopefully, I’ll do a much better job than I did in May. It’s a privilege to get to run here and race this facility and would love nothing more than to have a good run, and hopefully put the bow on the Double stuff with another Brickyard 400 win.”
Larson enters Indianapolis with some much-needed momentum. Though he sits third in points heading into the 160-lap race, Larson had finished 13th or worse in five of the eight races since winning at Kansas Speedway in May, including a 37th-place DNF in the Coke 600. His fortunes changed for the better last weekend, however, with a fourth-place finish at Dover Motor Speedway.
“I knew that Dover would be a great opportunity for us to have a day like that,” Larson said, “where we could just be clean all race long and have speed and have things work out. But yeah, I mean, it got a little sketchy there when Bell spun. I thought I was going to get collected in that and be like, ‘Oh yeah, just continuing on our bad finishes here.’ But that was good. Hopefully that’s the beginning of us turning it around for us, but we’ll see.”
His track record at Indianapolis is stout: In seven starts on the Indy oval, Larson has one win, two top fives and four top 10s. Crew chief Cliff Daniels attributes that success to Larson’s persistence behind the scenes.
“He’s such a student of the game, and he has such versatility in so many different types of cars,” Daniels told NASCAR.com Friday. “He’s so adaptable. There are certainly some techniques that are different in clean air, fast pace here, versus being in traffic and the approach you have to take there. He’s studied that. He’s good at kind of changing himself to adapt to the moment. And he does that everywhere, really, but certainly at this place, he catches on pretty quick. So it’s a lot of fun to be here.”
SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Joe Gibbs Racing announced Friday that Denny Hamlin signed a multiyear contract extension that keeps the No. 11 driver behind the wheel with the organization through 2027.
Hamlin ranks 11th all-time with 58 NASCAR Cup Series victories and currently leads the field in wins this season after collecting his fourth at Dover Motor Speedway last Sunday.
When asked if the extension would be his last, Hamlin replied with a simple “most likely,” but laid out why the door remains open to continue racing beyond his 45th birthday in November.
“I would say it’s kind of a two-fold thing,” Hamlin said Friday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “Some of it is myself, motivating, right? I have goals I’d like to reach in the Cup Series and a really strong relationship with [team owner] Joe [Gibbs] and doing it for them and their family as well to keep going. Then, obviously, the ability to win week in, week out, that certainly is a high-motivating factor in wanting to do this. I think about on a weekly basis, would I want to do this if I didn’t have the ability or couldn’t win as much? It probably would not. The motivation wouldn’t be there. But certainly, as competitive as I am, I’m motivated by being able to win.”
Hamlin’s resume is prestigious, and he’s certainly in line to be a Hall of Famer when he chooses to step aside from full-time racing.
The 20-year Cup veteran owns three Daytona 500 trophies (2016, 2019, 2020), three Southern 500s (2010, 2017, 2021) and a Coca-Cola 600 triumph (2022). Hamlin owns the record for Cup Series Playoffs appearances with 18 and has made the Championship 4 on four occasions (2014, 2019, 2020, 2021).
From raising three kids to running a Cup team, Hamlin’s life is consumed with factors outside of piloting the No. 11 Toyota on a weekly basis. However, regardless of age, Hamlin says he won’t wait until the proverbial cliff approaches on his on-track abilities before hanging up the fire suit.
“I want the ability to know I can win my last race,” Hamlin said. “That’s going to be the deciding factor. I’m not going to wait until I start to head downward and then retire. I don’t want to go through a whole year of that. I understand if it just happens naturally in the second half of the final year — then it just happens. But I don’t want to have to go through another season, if I start tailing off, then the next year I’ll just retire. I can retire whenever I want to retire.”
It’s been a devilishly delightful highlight of Ty Dillon’s miracle run through the In-Season Challenge.
After each unbelievable upset, the 32nd seed lightheartedly calls out the favored driver (or team) that he just vanquished.
Dillon stole the thunder of “I beat your favorite driver” in saying farewell to Denny Hamlin. He teased Brad Keselowski for his subpar basketball skills (a deep cut for fans of Charlotte’s NBA team).
Hendrick Motorsports and Alex Bowman were scolded for a failed promise to silence NASCAR’s Cinderella story, and fans were encouraged to buy the “extra small size” Ty Dillon T-shirt that John Hunter Nemechek wore (and then playfully ripped up) before being beaten at Dover Motor Speedway.
“I just want to have fun,” Dillon said. “I try not to be too personal and keep it somewhat light.”
It will come as no surprise to learn that Dillon and his kids are fans of pro wrestling. “I love those mic moments that create the character,” he says, but this goes deeper than just “cutting a promo” (as the men in the colorful tights would say).
“I’m a huge sports fanatic, and I love the entertainment side of sports,” Dillon said. “I feel a lot of drivers hone in just on their personal performance, but we are entertainers. This is an entertainment sport. I always try to think of ways that I can be a more entertaining athlete, and this in-season tournament opened up the opportunity.”
It’s done much more than that for a journeyman driver whose prior claim to fame was being the grandson of Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress.
Dillon, 33, has made 266 starts in the Cup Series and driven in seven full-time seasons since 2017, and yet he admittedly was “invisible” when the $1 million bracket-style challenge began a month ago.
With NASCAR Nation finally getting to appreciate his affable charm, Dillon has noticed a massive surge of supporters. Fellow Cup drivers, fans and even security guards at Dover are cheering on a pilot who has been quite likable now that he commands the midsummer attention usually sucked up by playoff races.
“Our story doesn’t get told in years past,” Dillon said. “So I’m grateful that we’ve been able to show our personality as a team and myself as well in this run.
“It’s been really cool this in-season tournament has given us a spotlight that typically at this point in the season a team like ours isn’t getting, even though we’re still improving.”
His No. 10 Chevrolet still is far from setting the world on fire, but Dillon has enjoyed big moments. Starting with an eighth-place result at EchoPark Speedway, formerly known as Atlanta Motor Speedway (his first top 10 since April 2022), he advanced to the final round by ripping off four consecutive top 20s for the first time in nearly three years – and with a dramatic flair.
Whether moving Alex Bowman aside on the final turn of the last lap at Sonoma Raceway or taking Nemechek and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. three-wide into Turn 1 on an overtime restart at Dover, the feel-good story line of the inaugural In Season Challenge has been defined by the grit and determination of Kaulig Racing.
Meg Oliphant | Getty Images
“We’re finding ourselves as a bulldog of a team,” Dillon said. “We’re going to fight until the end, and don’t count us out until the last lap.
“We want to pull all these teams out to the deep water and then see who can survive the deep, deep water with us. Because we know we’re tougher than them.”
He speaks from surviving a career on the brink many times. If there’s been a knock on Dillon, it’s his lighthearted nature that he believes has been misunderstood as a lack of competitive fire.
But his goofy and blustery post-race barbs belie the fact that he is battle-tested. A winless decade of toiling in obscurity taught him the value of competitive persistence balanced with vulnerability and introspection.
“I’ve worked hard in the dark and not really had any recognition for a long time — and probably rightfully so as we haven’t done anything in the sport since my Xfinity career,” said Dillon, whose lone Xfinity victory was at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2014. “So I found peace in my own journey when nobody was watching or talking about me. Grinding in my own hard work and being pleased with what I’m putting into my career and my life and the way that I handle myself.
“When you find that satisfactory and you’re not really worried about the attention, but then the results and the attention start coming, you’re able to appreciate it in a different way.”
Sunday at the Brickyard, he will face off against Ty Gibbs, with the highest finisher earning $1 million.
Dillon aims to continue riding the momentum and spotlight for as long as he can.
“I keep telling my friends like I’m riding this wave and we’re going to ride it as long as it goes, but it is just that,” Dillon said. “Life comes in waves, and it’s always good to stop in the moments that are good and just be so present and happy. And to not look past the good moments in life because you have to find peace in your own journey and the things that you’re accomplishing when no one’s really looking.”
OK, but what bulletin board material does he have ready if he manages to beat Gibbs, the grandson of another NASCAR Hall of Famer?
Dillon laughs off the suggestion while explaining his next In-Season Challenge win would stand on its own without the need for any bravado.
“And I feel like we’ve already won this thing no matter what happens on Sunday anyway,” he said.
Just five races are left until the 2025 Cup Series Playoffs begin, and the current postseason leaderboard has some signs of movement after the most recent stop at Dover Motor Speedway.
Playoff Probabilities provided by Racing Insights (entering Indianapolis)
Four spots are still up for grabs, and the same four drivers above the elimination line before Dover are still in position to clinch one of the 16 playoff berths. All four, however, gained points relative to the playoff threshold at the “Monster Mile” to solidify their place.
At the top end of the playoff standings, Dover winner Denny Hamlin moved ahead of Kyle Larson as the provisional No. 1 seed on the playoff grid with his fourth victory of the 2025 season. Larson is the defending winner of Sunday’s Brickyard 400 (2 p.m. ET, TNT Sports/truTV, HBO Max, IMS Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), and Hamlin is seeking his first Indianapolis Motor Speedway win, a potential triumph that would complete the circuit’s grand slam of crown-jewel events.
With the latest postseason projections provided by Racing Insights, let’s dive into the probabilities to see who has the upper hand for a playoff spot heading to Indy and who could be in a post-Brickyard bind.
GREEN FLAG[Who’s in a great spot for Indianapolis]
Tyler Reddick has tasted victory at Indianapolis Motor Speedway before, but that triumph came back in 2022 when the road-course configuration was in place. When Indy went back to the traditional 2.5-mile oval for NASCAR competition last season, Reddick remained a contender, rolling to the pole position and backing that speed up with a runner-up finish in the main event. Regardless of his Indy fortunes, Reddick’s 156-point cushion above the elimination barrier has him in the running to clinch a spot early — barring a rash of first-time winners in the regular season’s final five.
Alex Bowman made the week’s biggest jump in the probability spectrum after finishing third at Dover, rising nearly 22 points to an 84% likelihood of making the playoff field. Chris Buescher’s chances also received a boost after a Dover top-10 result. He’s plus-44 to the cutline, but has an upcoming stretch that bodes well for him with Watkins Glen, Richmond and Daytona — the regular season’s final three races — all tracks where he has recent wins.
YELLOW FLAG [Who’s on the fringe for Indianapolis]
Bubba Wallace stemmed an early summer string of four straight finishes outside the top 20 by converting a seventh-place outcome at Dover, putting him in the “Last 4 In” category, probability-wise. He has landed top 10s in his last three Brickyard oval starts, giving the 23XI Racing driver extra reason for optimism — even though he’s just plus-16 relative to the bubble.
Wallace may have corrected a brief dip in the results column, but fellow Toyota driver Ty Gibbs has been a recent riser with seven consecutive top-15 finishes and a string of three straight top 10s. His 15.23% number in the probability index could use the same sort of sustained oomph.
RED FLAG [Who I’m concerned about heading to Indianapolis]
Ryan Preece’s season has been marked by overachieving, especially for an RFK Racing expansion team that didn’t exist before the dawn of the season. That said, the prospects for more bright spots seem dim on the Indy oval, where Preece has raced just three times, exiting after a crash his last two times out.
Preece fell from “Last 4 In” territory onto the outside of the probability bubble after a 19th-place Dover effort — a drop of just more than 20 percentage points. He’s also slotted to finish 25th in Racing Insights’ Brickyard 400 projections, leaving it up to the talented 34-year-old and his No. 60 team to buck the indicators at Indy.
iRacing and NASCAR announced the new “NASCAR 25” console game will launch this fall, Oct. 14, 2025, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox X/S, with PC via Steam at a later date.
“NASCAR 25,”the first standalone console game produced by iRacing, is set to feature the Cup, Xfinity and Craftsman Truck series.
For the first time, the ARCA Menards Series will be a part of the console gaming experience and play a key role in career mode.
With real drivers from their respective series, in career mode, gamers will be able to customize their own driver and vehicles, manage contracts, money, facility and staff. Making strategic decisions on and off the track will play a pivotal role in the journey from ARCA to becoming a Cup Series champion.
All four series will also be playable in other gameplay modes, such as quick races, seasons and online multiplayer.
It took a rain delay and multiple overtime restarts before sealing the deal, but Denny Hamlin’s victory last week at Dover was the latest in what has been a vintage season for the driver of the No. 11 car. The 11th-winningest driver in Cup Series history now has four trophies on the year — the most of anybody in the field — and he ranks fourth in the standings with the third-best average finish, third-best average Driver Rating and top-ranked Adjusted Points+ index of any Cup regular this season.
Denny has had plenty of great seasons before, of course. He’s made the Championship 4 on four separate occasions, in addition to finishing second in the Chase in 2010 and third during his rookie season of 2006. He also led the Cup Series in wins in both 2010 and 2012, and is one of just 11 modern-era (since 1972) drivers to have six different seasons with at least four wins.
That’s impressive enough by itself. But it cannot be ignored that Hamlin is doing all of this at age 44 this season, tying him for the fourth-oldest driver ever to rattle off a four-plus win season in modern Cup Series history — only Harry Gant (age 51 in 1991), Mark Martin (50 in 2009) and Bobby Allison (45 in 1983) did it at a more advanced age.
By conventional NASCAR wisdom, drivers shouldn’t be anywhere near this good at age 44. Even the greats tend to slow down — literally and figuratively — by their mid-40s. If you chart the cumulative share of career wins, top fives and top 10s for all retired modern-era drivers with at least 10 Cup Series victories, a clear pattern emerges: success peaks around age 34, begins a meaningful decline by 40 and is all but entirely out of fuel by 45.
Through their age-44 seasons, the same age Hamlin is now, our group of great historical drivers had claimed 93.4 percent of all the checkered flags they would ever win in their careers, with 92.6 percent of their eventual top fives and 91.3 percent of their lifetime top 10s. Whatever time they had left as a contender was running out fast.
And yet, Hamlin isn’t backing off the gas at this stage of his career — he’s speeding up. By multiple measures, this is his best performance since NASCAR introduced the Next Gen car in 2022. The only recent year that might compare is 2021 — the final season of the Gen 6 era — when he led the Cup Series in average finish and ranked second in both Adjusted Pts+ and Driver Rating. In fact, 2025 is just the third time in his career that Hamlin has finished among the top three in all three of those categories, joining 2021 and 2023.
Again, it’s remarkable that all of those performances have come during this, Denny’s third decade as a NASCAR driver. After a few seasons of seeming decline in 2022 and 2024, Hamlin’s numbers this year are just about as good as they’ve been throughout his whole time in Cup, with the only competition being his previous peaks from 2009-12 and 2019-21.
It’s the kind of late-career campaign that invites real speculation that this could finally be the year for Hamlin … or if not now, then when?
By now, it’s widely known that Hamlin is easily the winningest driver to never win a Cup Series crown. And if you visualize the all-time leaderboard of drivers without a championship, it becomes clear that he and Martin tower over the rest of NASCAR’s title-less elite:
One would think that a season like the one Hamlin is enjoying in 2025 would eventually end his championship drought and secure him his first-ever Cup title. But of course, we’ve had that same thought before: Denny’s career arc has long been defined by near-misses and close calls, stretching back nearly two decades.
That’s part of what makes this season so compelling. At +425, Hamlin trails only longtime nemesis Kyle Larson (+350) in DraftKings’ championship futures odds. And after last week’s Dover win, my model projects him as the favorite to win again on Sunday at Indianapolis — a track he’s never conquered in 16 tries, but one whose close cousins (Pocono, Michigan) have historically suited him very well. If Hamlin does take another checkered flag, it would mark his second back-to-back streak of the season — something only the serious title contenders can manage.
But the truth is, no amount of midseason success will mean much if Hamlin’s postseason journey finds a way to go sideways the way it so often has. That’s always been the story with Denny: Brilliance in the regular season, heartbreak in the playoffs. And so we’re left wondering — again — how many more chances like this he’ll get. How long can a 44-year-old driver keep his championship window open before he either gets his long-awaited breakthrough or Father Time finally slams it shut for good?
After three weeks off, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series returns to action in Friday night’s TSport 200 at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park (8 p.m. ET on FS1, NRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
That’s good news for reigning series champion Ty Majeski, whose victory at the 0.686-mile short track last year proved to be a springboard to the series championship.
Majeski added a win at Richmond and a runner-up finish from the pole at the Milwaukee Mile in his next two starts. After qualifying for the Championship 4, he won from the pole at Phoenix Raceway to secure the title.
Majeski was fourth in the Truck Series standings when he came to IRP last year. This season, his position is considerably more tenuous. With three races left in the regular season, the driver of the No. 98 ThorSport Racing Ford is 10th on the potential playoff grid, just 38 points above the current elimination line.
Accordingly, the TSport 200 couldn’t come at a better time for the 30-year-old short-track ace from Seymour, Wisconsin, who won the prestigious Slinger Nationals super late model race in his native state on July 8 during the downtime for the Truck Series.
Watkins Glen International and Richmond Raceway follow Indianapolis, and that portion of the schedule bodes well for Majeski in an underwhelming year for ThorSport. Majeski is the only one of the organization’s drivers currently above the elimination line.
Jake Garcia is 11th, 38 points behind his champion teammate. Two-time title winner Ben Rhodes is 13th on the current playoff grid, 68 points out, and three-time champion Matt Crafton is 153 points down in 16th, needing a win in the next three races to advance to the 10-driver playoffs.
The past few weeks have been some of the most challenging of Cole Bruce’s life.
Cole lost his father Robert Bruce, a respected veteran racer in Virginia, on July 1 due to complications stemming from a heart attack he suffered at Langley Speedway. Since then, Cole has grappled with the sudden loss of Robert, understandably leaving racing on the backburner during the grieving process.
Saturday’s twin Late Model features at Langley will serve as Cole’s first time back behind the wheel following Robert’s death. Numerous emotions are occupying Cole’s mind ahead of the upcoming races, but from his perspective, doing what he and his dad loved the most is the best way to move forward.
“Overwhelmed would probably be the right word,” Cole said. “I’m trying to get everything prepped for this weekend. Obviously, it’s different because before it was always me and dad doing everything. I’m a little bit relieved, too, because it’s been about a month since I’ve been racing. We’re trying to get back into the realm of normal, everyday life.
“It’s going to be super weird and abnormal because I think this is the first race I’ve ever run without dad being there in the big car.”
Robert’s passion for motorsports in general was the primary influence behind Cole’s decision to become a racer himself.
Among the cars Robert raced included Grand Stocks at Old Dominion Raceway, and he was heavily involved in Late Model Stocks. Robert also occasionally made appearances in major touring divisions like the NASCAR Goody’s Dash Series and the ARCA Menards Series.
The only start Robert made across NASCAR’s top three series was a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway in 2013. He finished 28th in the No. 84 Ford for Mike Harmon.
Robert’s versatile career helped him acquire a plethora of knowledge he would share with other drivers that eventually included his son Cole. With Robert by his side, Cole gradually got himself acclimated to Late Model Stocks and earned his first victory in the discipline at Langley earlier this year.
The path to that milestone required Cole to diligently absorb everything Robert was trying to teach him about Late Model Stocks. This tutelage extended to the financial side of the Bruces’ operation, which allowed Cole to develop a careful, pragmatic approach with how he races his fellow competitors.
“[He wanted me] to understand the actual sport itself, whether it was behind the wheel or on the business side of stuff,” Cole said. “He taught me how to save a penny, that’s for sure. One lesson I learned growing up was not putting my nose in places it shouldn’t be, because then he’d make me fix all my wrecked cars.
“That helped me understand how expensive things [are] and how much funds we actually had, so I kind of matured a lot in those stages.”
Cole Bruce broke through for his first Late Model Stock victory at Langley Speedway on April 19, 2025. (Photo: John Bechtel Photography)
Cole is thankful for all the information he was able to retain from Robert. Now responsibility falls upon him to keep applying that knowledge, something Cole admits has been challenging during his first race week without Robert.
When Cole was attending classes at Liberty University, Robert would oversee the day-to-day operations of the team and get his Late Model Stock ready. Effectively stepping into his dad’s role has provided Cole a fresh perspective on short-track racing when it comes to the intricacies of making a small operation sustainable.
Nothing about the transition has been easy, but Cole is taking everything day-by-day with his scenario.
“[It’s been hard] doing a lot of the stuff on my own,” Cole said. “I have people around me who will come over and help me get the car ready, as well as answer my questions if I have any. Another logistical challenge is race week prep like cleaning up tires every week, scaling the car or, hell, just trying to find stuff in the shop.
“Now that [my dad’s] gone, I have a greater appreciation for [what he did], because there’s a lot more of a workload trying to do it yourself.”
With so much effort being exerted into preparing his No. 31 Clubtails Toyota just for Saturday evening, Cole has not given substantial thought into the long-term future of his team.
Cole does intend to finish the 2025 season at Langley and chase more victories in honor of his dad. With the Hampton Heat not being a points event, Cole did not have that race on his schedule prior to Robert’s death, but the two discussed potentially entering the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 at Martinsville Speedway again after skipping the race last year.
Funding will dictate whether Cole makes the trip to Martinsville in September, but he is determined to find a way into Late Model Stock’s crown jewel event. Robert was unable to make the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 during his lone attempt in 2013, with Cole himself failing to qualify for the race in 2022 and 2023.
A busy slate of events at Langley awaits Cole before the ValleyStar Credit Union 300. He sits fourth in Langley’s Late Model Stock standings with five races remaining and is confident the speed his car possessed earlier in the year will be prevalent as he closes out a productive-but-solemn year.
Cole knows he can win Saturday, but doing so would bring mixed emotions — just like the entire week preceding the twin Late Model Stock features.
“[A win would] mean the world to me, but it would definitely suck since it’d be my first win without dad,” Cole said. “It’ll be a very emotional night if so, but I know he’ll be with me this weekend and all the other races moving forward. That’s all he wanted to see me do, succeed. We’re ready to go out there and do what we normally do.”
Cole Bruce intends to finish the 2025 season at Langley Speedway in honor of his dad Robert Bruce (Photo: Dinah Marie Photography)
Cole has never known a life in motorsports without Robert. The two spent years developing their small operation into one that could regularly contend for wins in Langley’s competitive Late Model Stock class, with Cole believing the two had many more chapters in that journey ahead.
One positive through a tumultuous period for Cole and the Bruce family is that he has had plenty of time to reflect on numerous great memories with Robert. Cole will always remember Robert as a great short-track competitor, but an even better father.
“Dad was always in my corner,” Cole said. “We’ve gone through a lot of trials and errors, but whether I was in the wrong or right, he was always there backing me up but made sure I understood where I messed up. We finally got to a point where we understood each other well, and he always supported everything I wanted to do.
“He always sacrificed a lot for us to make sure that me, my sister and my family were always able to do what we wanted to do.”
Robert may be gone, but his spirit lives on through Cole, a son determined to carry on his father’s love and commitment to motorsports.
Here’s what’s happening in NASCAR with the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Dover Motor Speedway in the rearview and the Brickyard 400 Presented by PPG at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (2 p.m. ET, TNT Sports/truTV, HBO Max, IMS Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) up next.
1. Who holds the edge in the In-Season Challenge Championship?
Sixth-seeded Ty Gibbs will battle No. 32 Ty Dillon for $1 million and bragging rights. Who will prevail once the dust settles at the Brickyard?
Four races down and only two drivers remain in the inaugural In-Season Challenge, with two Tys — Ty Gibbs and Ty Dillon — slated for head-to-head action on the Indianapolis oval. The goal is as simple as it was during the four previous races: Finish ahead of the other. The question that follows is also a simple one. Who has the edge over the other, and who will claim the championship victory and sleek trophy that comes with it?
The numbers-oriented reaction suggests going with Gibbs. According to Racing Insights, Gibbs holds the head-to-head edge over Dillon since the Next Gen era began in 2022 (55 vs. 24). In terms of their head-to-head results in 2025, Gibbs also takes the cake (12 vs. nine), and the same goes for Gibbs’ finishes at Pocono Raceway and Michigan International Speedway this season … tracks similar in style to Indy (two vs. zero).
One area, though, could suggest that the 32-seeded Dillon has an advantage, and that is experience when it comes to tackling the Indy oval itself. After all, Dillon has five career Cup starts on the 2.5-mile configuration compared to Gibbs’ one, which came in 2024 during his sophomore campaign. There’s more to it, too — Dillon’s average finish at Indianapolis (17.2) is his best at any non-drafting oval and his second-best among all tracks. Dillon’s 19th-place finish in the 2024 Indy running additionally beat Gibbs’ 23rd-place result in their only head-to-head Cup matchup at that facility.
Dillon, who is currently on a four-race top-20 streak (a season high), has arguably been the face of the bracket-style bout, and while Gibbs, too, is on a scorcher of sorts (his three-race top-10 streak is currently the longest streak of any driver), perhaps the raw power of the lowest seed winning it all prevails over pure metrics.
“It feels good. You know, I have been the underdog for a long time now, just battling my way to try to get an opportunity,” Dillon said following his Round 4 In-Season Challenge victory over John Hunter Nemechek at Dover. “Eventually, you get comfortable in fighting from behind and people underestimating you. It’s hard to say that we lucked into it this far in, and I am proud of the way we have run. We haven’t been a dominating car, but we have been a pain to everyone around us. That is all we can do — put pressure on them and execute at the right time, and that is what we have done.”
In other words, it’s anyone’s guess who truly holds the advantage this weekend, given how small the sample size is for these drivers when it comes to this track layout. One might still view Gibbs as the favorite based on the head-to-head numbers alone. Perhaps, if you believe a great story line prevails, Dillon is your pick. And while either direction has its merits, Indianapolis is still new to the Next Gen car, so anything can happen.
One thing is for certain: As the challenge nears its end, each driver will have to pass one final test to win the prize, with the Brickyard being the ultimate test for the exciting duel.
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2. What tricks do the bricks have up their sleeve?
On the surface, Indianapolis might look relatively tame. However, as recent history has illustrated, plenty of surprises should be expected.
Indy’s flat straightaways and paved racing surface might not be the biggest racing extreme compared to other tracks on the circuit, but make no mistake — the Brickyard 400 is not a race to take lightly, and that’s without even discussing the crown-jewel aspect of it.
Take last season’s contest. Kyle Larson triumphed at the track in NASCAR Overtime despite needing an extra pit stop for a loose wheel, giving Hendrick Motorsports 11 wins in 106 combined starts. One might assume it was a run-of-the-mill, Hendrick-dominant effort from start to finish (Hendrick leads all organizations in wins, top fives, top 10s and laps led there), but it was quite the contrary; Hendrick Chevrolets led only nine of 167 laps, with Larson leading eight of those.
Even still, given the track’s characteristics, one might have assumed the race to favor fuel mileage. And while the contest started off that way, it didn’t end as such. A Kyle Busch wreck on Lap 158 set the stage for two overtime attempts, with the field running two seconds slower than normal to save fuel, only for one race leader — Brad Keselowski — to run dry anyway and head to the pits, allowing Larson to gain the lead from Ryan Blaney following a multicar wreck during the first of two overtime restarts. The race eventually ended under caution after a Ryan Preece accident.
Sure, a heavy hitter such as Larson did win the contest, and yes, Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing have combined to win six of the last nine Brickyard 400s. But the nature of these victories isn’t as straightforward and as dominating as you’d think.
Let the track record (no pun intended) speak for itself. According to Racing Insights, the driver to lead the most laps has won only three of the last nine Brickyard 400s. The final lead change came in the last eight laps in five of the last seven races, and six Brickyard 400s went into overtime, including five of the last seven. With last season’s action-packed closing sequences serving as a reminder, cautions have also contributed to the contest’s reputation, with the last five Brickyard 400s averaging 12 DNFs.
Nothing should come easy, least of all a crown-jewel race. Adding the ever-looming NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs further intensifies the tension, especially for drivers currently on the postseason bubble. Let 2024 be a lesson: Three drivers that were above the elimination line this late into last season — Chris Buescher, Ross Chastain and Bubba Wallace — ended up missing the 16-driver grid entirely.
No matter what read you might have on a track, unpredictability always has its way, and a crown-jewel race is no exception. The best advice ahead of this weekend’s Indy bout? You might assume you have the track figured out, but in the end, it could be anything but the case. Recognize as such, and perhaps the Brickyard will reward you in more ways than one.
Alex Weaver, Kyle Petty and Greg Biffle break down Christopher Bell’s late-race spin at Dover Motor Speedway while battling teammate Denny Hamlin.
4. Fantastic four: Where did the first driver to four wins finish in the championship table?
Denny Hamlin became the first Cup Series driver in 2025 to reach the four-win threshold. View how each driver in the elimination era fared after being the first in the series to eclipse four victories. (Credit: Racing Insights)
Season
Driver
Playoff Finish
2024
Kyle Larson
Sixth
2023
William Byron
Third
2022
Chase Elliott
Fourth
2021
Kyle Larson
First
2020
Denny Hamlin
Fourth
2019
Kyle Busch
First
2018
Kevin Harvick
Third
2017
Martin Truex Jr.
First
2016
Brad Keselowski
12th
2015
Jimmie Johnson
10th
2014
Brad Keselowski
Fifth
5. Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage
