For most of its history, the Brickyard 400 did not lack for kings.

Jeff Gordon won it five times. Jimmie Johnson won four. Kevin Harvick took three. Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Dale Jarrett each claimed it twice. All current or future Hall of Famers.

All champions.

Those six drivers alone account for 18 of the race’s 29 editions, turning one of NASCAR’s crown jewels into something closer to a coveted timeshare passed down from generation to generation among friends. Indianapolis Motor Speedway did not merely reward greatness among its few Victory Lane inhabitants; it repeatedly handed the same great drivers the keys with a wink and a nod and a “see you next summer.”

That hierarchy is now gone.

Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson and defending winner Bubba Wallace are the only drivers entered this weekend with Brickyard 400 victories, each owning one. No active driver has won the oval race more than once. The trophy and accompanying kiss of the bricks remain among the sport’s most coveted prizes, but there is no true established ruler waiting to defend his ground. The crown remains. The king does not.

That leaves Sunday’s Brickyard 400 (2 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, IMS Radio Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) in an unusual place: One of NASCAR’s most historically exclusive races is suddenly open to almost anyone capable of putting together the right afternoon.

That said, while Indy may no longer have a repeat monarch, its history still leans heavily toward the sport’s best. Eleven of the Brickyard’s 17 winners are Cup Series champions. Those 11 drivers have accounted for 23 of the 29 oval race wins — and count 30 championships among them.

Perhaps most notably, however — the race winner has gone on to claim the title in the same season nine times. That history has long made Indianapolis more than a crown jewel, also functioning as something of a championship filter. The modern version, however, makes that crystal ball a little cloudy.

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The Brickyard shifted away from the oval layout after 2020 as NASCAR ran the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course for three seasons. By the time the Cup Series returned to the 2.5-mile layout in 2024, the Next Gen car had altered the competitive equation, some retirements had hit the field and the continuity that once allowed elite drivers and teams to build an Indianapolis advantage year after year was interrupted. The race itself has changed with it.

The driver who led the most laps has won only three of the last 10 Brickyard 400s. The final lead change came in the last eight laps in five of the last eight. Six of those eight races went to overtime, including the last three, and the final green-flag stretch has been nine laps or fewer in each of the last eight editions.

Indianapolis once crowned drivers who controlled the long, methodical, rhythmic afternoons. The modern Brickyard increasingly crowns the driver and team best equipped to survive the moment control disappears.

Larson’s 2024 victory offered the clearest recent example. Fuel conservation slowed portions of the field by more than two seconds per lap late in the race as drivers tried to stretch their final tanks. Larson charged through that traffic, then inherited the preferred restart position when Keselowski ran out of fuel coming to the green. Late cautions repeatedly reshaped the order before No. 5 finally secured the win.

Wallace’s victory last summer followed a different route, but featured the same uncertainty.

He built a lead approaching five seconds before rain stopped the race. That advantage vanished, and Wallace then had to fend off Larson through two overtime restarts while his team sweated whether the No. 23 Toyota had enough fuel to reach the checkered flag, ultimately winning by 0.222 seconds.

Neither victory was random with a wildcard winner, though. Larson and Wallace placed themselves in contention through speed, execution and smart decisions over the course of the afternoon, yes, but neither enjoyed the kind of sustained control that used to define many Brickyard wins, often through unparalleled domination.

The first 350-plus miles still seems to determine who deserves to win Indianapolis. The final few circuits increasingly filter who actually does.

Larson may be the closest thing the current Brickyard has to an emerging specialist. He won when the oval returned in 2024 and finished second to Wallace last year — on top of making a couple of other appearances at the track in the month of May — making him the only driver to place inside the top two in both Next Gen Brickyard 400s. Larson has three top fives and five top 10s in eight Indianapolis Cup starts overall.

It is the strongest modern claim anyone can make — but it’s not yet a reign.

Two races can establish a pattern, but Indianapolis kings have traditionally earned the title through repetition. Gordon did not own the Brickyard because he won once and he became the hometown hero from Pittsboro. The same theme applies for Johnson and Harvick. They kept returning and proving that whatever changed around them, the Brickyard still belonged to them.

Wallace now has the same opportunity to begin building that kind of case. His win last year did not come out of nowhere. No. 23 finished fifth in 2024 and owns the best average running position at Indianapolis in the Next Gen car at 7.3. His 11.2 average finish there is his best at any Cup track where he has made multiple starts.

And the success there could extend team-wide.

Tyler Reddick won the pole and finished second in 2024, helping 23XI Racing place two cars inside the top five while leading 66 of 167 laps. Wallace then started from the front row, led 30 laps and won a year later. Through only five organizational starts on the Indianapolis oval, 23XI has one win, one runner-up finish and three top fives. A second consecutive Wallace victory would make him the first driver to repeat at the Brickyard since Kyle Busch in 2015-16 — and the first person with a legitimate claim to owning this version of Indianapolis.

Then there is Denny Hamlin, perhaps the most compelling fit for a crown he’s still yet to don.

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Hamlin arrives as the Cup Series points leader and one of the clear championship favorites. He has four wins, a series-best 863 laps led and an 8.7 average finish through 21 races, with Racing Insights giving him a 90% probability of securing the No. 1 seed for the Chase.

No. 11’s Indianapolis resume looks like it should already include a trophy. It does not.

Hamlin has six top fives and nine top 10s in 17 Brickyard starts, with four third-place finishes, with those six top fives being his most at any Cup track where he remains winless. He started from the rear last season after a qualifying crash and still drove to third.

Hamlin has spent years looking like the kind of driver Indianapolis historically crowns, without ever receiving his coronation. At 45, with one of the strongest seasons of his career underway, the two most obvious omissions from his resume remain impossible to ignore: a Brickyard 400 victory and a Cup Series championship.

A win Sunday would not answer the larger question. Hamlin knows better than anyone that no July result can settle what happens in November. It would, however, remove one long-standing crown-jewel omission while strengthening the case that this season may finally be the one the bigger box is checked, as well.

Hamlin is hardly alone in that pursuit.

Ryan Blaney has finished inside the top 10 in three of his last four Indianapolis starts, including third in 2024 and seventh last season. He enters his 400th Cup start ranked third in points, with 15 top 10s through 21 races, and will also race Todd Gilliland for the $1 million NASCAR In-Season Challenge prize.

Christopher Bell owns one of the cleanest Indianapolis records among drivers still seeking their first Brickyard win. He has never finished worse than 12th in three starts, posting an 8.0 average finish — his best at any active oval where he has competed more than once. Bell finished fourth in 2024 and eighth last year.

Reddick remains second in points despite a difficult seven-race stretch and already owns a victory on the Indianapolis road course. On the oval, he finished second in 2024 and has two top 10s in three starts.

Keselowski offers another kind of opportunity.

His 2018 victory makes him the only entered former winner capable of linking the previous Brickyard era directly to the current one. He has four top fives and seven top 10s in 13 Indianapolis starts, with all four top fives coming in his last six races there. A second victory would make him the first active multi-time oval winner in the field. That may be just the jolt needed to go on a run toward championship No. 2, too.

But it’s all up for grabs.

Indianapolis no longer guarantees that the fastest car or most dominant driver wins, but it still does an exceptional job of keeping the sport’s strongest contenders nearby when the race is finally decided.

And in this modernized era of NASCAR, that may be the freshened-up Brickyard championship test.

Not merely speed. Not merely control. Pace, planning, patience and the ability to react when an entire afternoon is suddenly reduced to one final restart. The old Brickyard created rulers through repetition. The current version has created a crowded line of qualified heirs.

Sunday will not crown NASCAR’s next Indianapolis king.

But with the throne vacant and nearly every credible title contender circling it, the Brickyard may finally tell us who deserves the strongest first claim.