Goodyear is set to bring a familiar short-track tire setup for Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway (7 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Cup Series teams will utilize the same left- and right-side tire compounds previously used in the spring at nearby Martinsville Speedway and last month in the North Carolina foothills at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
This short-track tire setup debuted in the 2025 Martinsville fall race, with the right-side tire getting some additional track time in early 2026 at Bowman Gray Stadium and Phoenix Raceway. The goal of this tire compound is to increase grip and lap time fall-off over the course of a green-flag run.
“Cup Series teams are familiar with this setup and already have some data to help plan their strategies this weekend,” said Rick Heinrich, Goodyear NASCAR product manager. “While this is the first time we’ve brought this left-side tire to Richmond, it’s a proven tire that has performed well on similar short tracks. The track surface at Richmond is known for producing high tire wear and lap-time fall-off, so tire management will be critical.”
In addition, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series teams will have the same left- and right-side tire compounds from two short-track races last month at North Wilkesboro and Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park. The Truck Series will race at Richmond on Friday (7:30 p.m. ET, FS1, FOX One, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Tire allotment for each team competing this weekend:
Cup Series: 11 total sets — 9 new for the race, 1 for qualifying, which transfers to the race, and 1 for practice. Teams will also have 4 wet-weather sets available, if needed. Craftsman Truck Series: 6 total sets — 4 new for the race, 1 for qualifying, which transfers to the race, and 1 for practice. Teams will also have 3 wet-weather sets available, if needed.
After racing for more than two decades, it seems like the only accomplishment eluding Brad Warthan is a championship.
This year, he has a shot at two.
Warthan is competing in both the Blystone Towing Modified and the Lefthander Performance 602 Outlaw divisions at Wisconsin’s Dells Raceway Park. He currently leads the Modified standings by one point with two wins and five top fives in seven races.
He’s also third in 602 Outlaw points with a win and three top fives in six races.
This is Warthan’s first year racing in both series. He’s been a regular in the 602 Outlaw class at Dells, a NASCAR Local Racing Series Powered by O’Reilly Auto Parts track in Juneau County, Wisconsin, for the last six years, and has several top three finishes in the final points standings.
Last year, car owner Austin Powers let Warthan drive his Modified in one race. After that night, “He enjoyed how I drove it and asked me to drive it this year,” Warthan said.
He had never driven a Modified before that race, but he’s taken to the new car well.
“It’s absolutely been fun,” he said. “It’s more of an elbows up kind of thing. You’ve really got to be up on top of it because there’s no downforce on the front end of it. Along with that, the one that I’m driving, we don’t have to have a windshield in it, which is definitely a different feeling for me considering the fact I’ve never really had any of that wind in my face like that.
“It’s definitely a learning curve.”
Warthan said the first night he didn’t like the way the car was reacting, so he took it to his good friend, Derik Squires at DSR Chassis, to completely work it over.
The next week, Warthan put the Modified in victory lane.
“I think it took more weight off of Austin’s shoulders than anything,” Warthan said. “He’s had that car three years now, maybe four, and he hasn’t been able to put a feature win underneath it. I made sure to give him the trophy and let him take it home.”
Warthan picked up his first 602 Outlaw win on May 2.
“Being able to knock a win out of both cars right out of the gate at the beginning of the year really takes a lot off my shoulders,” he said. “We’ve already got a win so now all we’ve got to focus on is continuing to be as good as we are.”
In his first year racing a Modified at Dells Raceway Park, Brad Warthan has already found Victory Lane twice. (Photo: Dells Raceway Park)
When asked if he had any goals coming into this season, Warthan didn’t hesitate.
“Oh yeah, absolutely,” he said. “We wanted a championship in both of them. I mean, that’s hands down, no doubt about it.”
Warthan has always raced for small, underfunded teams. Even this year, for both cars they’ve ran the same tires every race. Thankfully, he has sponsors like Bob Sauer with SS&E Concrete, Steve VanEtten with Touch of Heart CPR, and Jeff Myer from Innovation Movers, as well as friends who will show up sometimes with a few extra dollars so he can buy whatever needs.
Until then, he said they simply make due.
“We do what we do with what we can, and when we can afford tires, we buy tires,” he said. “When we can’t afford tires, well, we just race because that’s what we do. We’re out there to have a lot of fun and we sure do have a lot of fun doing it.”
Warthan has spent his entire life around race cars.
“I was born and two months later we were at the race track,” he said.
His dad raced at Tomah-Sparta Speedway in Wisconsin, so when Warthan was young he would ride around in the back of the truck after the races and even clean up whatever he could find in the pits.
“Most nights we’d find tools and sockets and a bunch of stuff, and then eventually, as it got to where I was 14 years old, I bought a go-kart and started racing for two years,” he said.
He’s been competing ever since. When he’s not behind the wheel himself, he’s the race director at Tomah-Sparta.
“Once you get it in, you just can’t get out,” he said. “I’ve tried to quit. I’ve tried to sell everything. I’ve tried to walk away, and no matter what, every time I just, I’m too deep into it and I love the sport way too much to walk away.”
Before moving to Dells in 2019, Warthan raced for several seaons at Wisconsin’s LaCrosse Fairgrounds Speedway, another NASCAR Local Racing Series track. Some bad luck cost him a championship there in 2017, so he took the 2018 season off to regroup.
Once he got to what is now his new home, “I won the second night out at Dells in my Sportsman car, and I’ve kind of been hooked to that place ever since,” he said.
While he said winning a championship was definitely his No. 1 goal for 2026, if it doesn’t happen Warthan said he’s happy to simply continue chasing wins. In his 26th season, he’s less than 20 away from 100 for his career.
Whether he gets to 100 or wins a championship, Warthan looks back on his career with pride in everything he’s accomplished.
And he’s not done yet.
“To be able to stand down there with a sign that says 100 will be pretty much icing on the cake,” he said.
“Winning a championship is something I’d really like to do before I end up quitting racing, but if it doesn’t come I can always look back and say I’ve won a lot of races and I’ve won a lot of big races up here. It’s not a loss if I don’t ever win one, that’s for sure. Will it break my heart? I’m sure. But in the end when I really sit back and think about it, I’ve got a lot of trophies to look at, and one championship isn’t going to matter about how my racing career actually was.”
Racing will return to Dells Raceway Park on Saturday for the Ron Meister Memorial 50 beginning at 6 p.m. CT.
NASCAR.com’s Pat DeCola ranks the top 20 Cup Series drivers competing for the 2026 championship after Ty Gibbs’ win at Iowa Speedway and before Saturday’s race at Richmond Raceway (7 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Analysis: Iowa threw just about everything it could at Hamlin, from brake issues to start the weekend and a trip to the rear before the green to more brake trouble during the race, and he still drove to fifth. That gained him another 19 points on the field and stretched his championship lead to 103 over his teammate Gibbs with three races remaining, while the No. 11 continues to rank first in season-long speed. Richmond is precisely where you’d expect Hamlin to keep the pressure on, too: He owns five Cup wins there, including victories in 2022 and 2024, and finished 10th last season. At this stage, even a weekend that begins sideways seems to end with Hamlin further ahead than when it started, which is a dangerous attribute come Chase time.
Analysis: The conversation around Gibbs has changed dramatically in just a handful of months, and second in these rankings with just 13 races left in the season is worthy of real recognition. A disastrous Stage 1 pit stop dropped the No. 54 from fourth to 28th at Iowa, but Gibbs methodically erased all of it, leapfrogged Bell with a two-tire call on the final green-flag stop and then refused to crack with his teammate filling the mirror over the closing laps. It was win No. 2 of 2026 and moved him from fourth to second in points, but perhaps more telling — he has finished in the top four in all four short-track races this season. Richmond has been less spectacular for Gibbs at the Cup level — with one top 10 and a 19.3 average finish in six starts — though Gibbs won the 2022 O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race there. If there was still a question whether No. 54 belonged in the championship heavyweight discussion, Iowa went a long way toward answering it.
Analysis: Blaney probably left Iowa wondering how the most dominant car managed to only finish third, but that’s been the story of his season, to a degree. The No. 12 started from the pole, led a race-high 129 laps, won Stage 1 and ranked first in both speed and restarts before the final strategy cycle tilted toward the JGR teammates. He nevertheless gained 30 points relative to The Chase cut and now owns a series-best 16 top 10s, further cementing one of the steadiest seasons in the garage. Richmond historically has not been one of Blaney’s signature tracks, but third place with 39 laps led last summer certainly suggests that old weakness is losing relevance. Another afternoon like Iowa and eventually strategy won’t be able to keep the No. 12 out of Victory Lane.
Analysis: At some point, Bell has to run out of ways to finish second. Iowa made it seven runner-ups this season — four in the last five races alone — after he climbed from 22nd, won Stage 2, led 108 laps and ranked first in both passing and defense and second in speed. The total ties Harry Gant’s 1981 mark for the most second-place finishes in a winless season, which has crossed the line from frustrating into genuinely bizarre. Richmond seems as logical a place as any to finally end it: Bell has yet to win there in Cup, but he won three consecutive O’Reilly Auto Parts Series races at the track from 2018-19. The strangest part of this entire saga remains that Bell isn’t merely getting close; he keeps looking like one of the very best cars on the track and arguably the best.
Analysis: Briscoe’s Iowa sixth-place run almost qualifies as boring compared with what he’s been doing lately. No. 19 started 20th, worked his way to the front half of the field and spent portions of the afternoon chasing Bell before recording his fifth top-six finish in six races. He gained another 23 points relative to The Chase cut and now sits fifth in points. Richmond offers a fascinating test because Briscoe’s career record there has been aggressively ordinary: no top 10s in nine Cup starts, but a respectable 16.3 average finish. Current form says that resume may not mean much anymore, though.
Analysis: Few season arcs in recent memory have turned as sharply as Reddick’s. The driver who captured our attention early on by winning five of the first nine races lost control on Lap 4 at Iowa, swept Erik Jones into the wall and finished 36th … for his fifth result of 30th or worse in the last nine races. He has slipped from second to fourth in points in that span, now 120 behind Hamlin, and finally tumbles out of the elite tier he occupied in these rankings essentially all season as his JGR compatriots almost all look like stronger contenders at the moment. Richmond, ironically, captures the current Reddick experience rather well: Last year he won Stage 1 and led 41 laps, only to finish 34th. The No. 45 still ranks second in season-long speed and first in passing, so the machinery underneath the slump is hardly broken. But with The Chase around the corner, the early season juggernaut needs to start resembling itself again, and soon.
Analysis: Hocevar finally ran into the kind of weekend his breakout season had largely managed to avoid. An alternator issue surfaced early at Iowa, he later spun while buried in traffic, and the No. 77 finished 31st, dropping three positions in the standings and surrendering 11 points relative to The Chase cut. The previous 22 races built enough cushion to absorb it, however, and Richmond offers a useful reminder that short tracks have been part of his ascent rather than a drag on it. Hocevar won the 2023 Craftsman Truck Series race there, then led 10 Cup laps before finishing 15th last summer. Iowa interrupted the climb; it did not invalidate it. The next step for an increasingly complete driver is showing how quickly he can make a rotten afternoon irrelevant and find a way to rebound.
Analysis: Elliott’s path to 15th at Iowa was considerably more eventful than the finishing position suggests. After crashing in practice and starting from the rear, he used strategy to lead 18 laps before a pit stop went sideways and sent him backward again. He still gained five points relative to the cutline, but the bigger concern is organizational: Hendrick Motorsports’ summer short-track performance has not looked anything like what you’d expect from the championship outfit. Richmond itself has generally been kind to Elliott, though — six top fives and eight top 10s in 18 Cup starts with a 12.2 average finish. That makes Saturday less of a survival exercise and more an opportunity for the No. 9 to prove the recent lull is schedule-specific rather than something deeper. But there’s no guarantee it is.
Analysis: Buescher gains a position largely because the standings around him shifted, not because Iowa offered much reason to celebrate. The No. 17 finished 13th but ranked 30th in speed and 32nd in both passing and defense, a surprisingly invisible afternoon for a driver whose floor has usually been one of his strengths. Still, Buescher leaves ninth in points and 140 above The Chase line, and Richmond is much more his kind of place. He won there in 2023, leading 88 laps, before last year’s 30th-place clunker interrupted what had been a much better recent run. If there is a track to remind everybody why Buescher spent much of this season inside the upper reaches of these rankings, this one certainly qualifies.
Analysis: Iowa’s relationship with Larson remains downright hostile. After starting second and finishing third in Stage 1, the No. 5 was forced high in a four-wide mess and tangled with Hendrick teammate Alex Bowman, eventually finishing 33rd — his third result of 33rd or worse in four races. Yet here comes the same contradiction that has defined his entire season: Larson still has 637 laps led, the fastest pit crew in the sport and ranks sixth in season-long speed despite sitting 10th in points with no wins. Richmond is legitimately one of the better tracks available for a reset, with Cup wins in 2017 (pre-Hendrick) and 2023 and a sixth-place finish last year. We’ve called several tracks rebound opportunities lately. Eventually one will stop being hypothetical.
Analysis: Fourteenth hardly screams “another strong Logano race,” but the box score misses most of what happened. He ran second throughout the opening stage, finished runner-up in both stages and ranked third in speed and restarts before a pit-road issue forced the No. 22 to back up and retighten the left-rear wheel. His Chase cushion nevertheless expanded to 89 points, a remarkable place to be after spending much of the summer staring up at the wrong side of the line. And Richmond is about as (sliced) bread-and-butter as tracks get for him: two wins, 15 top fives and 20 top 10s in 32 starts, with a 9.8 average finish. The comeback has already happened. Now the three-time champ gets one of his best tracks to keep stacking on it and really build his case.
Analysis: Byron did something at Iowa that no Hendrick driver had managed in three races: finish in the top 10. Ninth hardly resembled his dominant victory there last season, but it stopped the organizational bleeding, added 15 points to his Chase cushion and moved the No. 24 back up a position in the standings. His second-ranked pit crew remains an enormous asset, particularly as margins begin to shrink, though Richmond has produced considerably less noise lately and Byron finished 12th there last season. He is now 103 points above the cut, so urgency is not the issue, but finding the version of Byron that looked like an obvious championship fixture early in the year is.
Analysis: Suárez’s Iowa race never really had a chance to get started. The No. 7 rolled off 33rd, remained buried throughout the afternoon, ranked 27th in speed and finished 23rd, yet somehow surrendered only three points relative to The Chase cut because almost everybody around him had problems of their own. That leaves Suárez an even 100 points above the line and in excellent mathematical shape despite the uneven performances. (See? Winning still helps.) Richmond provides a much better recent reference point: seventh last summer with a lap led, his best finish during that portion of the schedule, as he was already winding down his time at Trackhouse Racing. Three races from The Chase, Suárez doesn’t need fireworks. A couple more afternoons like last year’s Richmond effort would make the rest of the regular season wonderfully uneventful and that’s what he’s looking for right now.
Analysis: Wallace continues finding ways to make good races look mediocre by the time the standings are updated. He surged from 26th at Iowa, took the lead from Elliott and paced 35 laps, only to speed entering pit road under caution and spend the remainder of the afternoon doing his best to recover to 12th. Richmond last year somehow provided an even more extreme version of that same script: Wallace led a race-high 123 laps there last year before finishing 28th. In 14 Cup starts at the track, he has just one top five and one top 10 despite leading 206 total laps. There’s plenty of evidence that Wallace can be fast Saturday, but the question is whether the No. 23 can finally convert Richmond speed into the result it has repeatedly deserved — and if there’s enough steam left in his season to avoid squandering his Chase positioning.
Analysis: SVG has spent much of 2026 raising his oval ceiling, but Iowa was a reminder that the floor remains a work in progress. He spun in Stage 2, finished 30th three laps down and lost another 10 points against The Chase cut, trimming his margin to just 47 with three races remaining. Richmond is at least familiar enough to him to reduce some uncertainty after a perfectly useful 14th-place run there last season. The No. 97 has already delivered legitimate oval performances at Nashville, EchoPark and North Wilkesboro this year, so Iowa shouldn’t reset the entire evaluation. But this is no longer an experimental stretch, either. SVG now needs those lessons to come in handy to help preserve a Chase position that is very much not locked in.
Analysis: Boy, that cutoff line is getting uncomfortably close. Cindric is still safe for now, but finished 29th at Iowa, ranked 25th in speed and gave away nine points to The Chase cut, leaving just 29 points between the No. 2 and fellow Ford driver Ryan Preece with three races remaining. Richmond should provide considerably more confidence than Iowa did, though: Cindric finished fifth there last season, one of three Penske cars inside the top five, after briefly leading. The comforting part is that Penske has been among the strongest organizations on short tracks lately. The uncomfortable part is that Preece, Chastain, Keselowski and Jones are separated by only 21 points immediately behind him. Saturday could turn the bubble race from tense into absolute chaos.
Analysis: Preece’s 20th-place Iowa result was hardly the breakthrough he needed, yet the standings somehow moved in his favor. The No. 60 gained nine points on Cindric and is now only 29 below the cut, keeping alive a season that has repeatedly flirted with The Chase without quite getting over the line for good. Richmond is perhaps the most intriguing track left for him: The short-track star won the pole and led 60 laps there last summer before crashing to 35th, and his career line includes a 2023 top five to mark his best finish across 10 starts. There are no more moral victories available at this stage, but there are still enough points. A clean version of last year’s Richmond speed could finally make this bubble fight flip.
Analysis: Now that looked like a driver trying to make The Chase. Chastain produced perhaps his best all-around weekend of the year at Iowa, finishing seventh after leading 40 laps and ranking fifth in speed, second in defense and fifth on restarts. The payoff was enormous: 35 points gained relative to the cut, a three-position standings jump and a deficit that has suddenly shrunk to 47. Richmond does not supply an obvious silver bullet, however — Chastain finished 19th there last season — so Iowa needs to represent a broader, No. 1 team-wide improvement rather than a track-specific spike. After months of waiting for Trackhouse to turn flashes into a complete afternoon on an oval, Chastain finally did. There is just enough runway left for that to matter a lot, but he’ll need to hurry up.
Analysis: Keselowski’s recent momentum ran straight into the Iowa wall before Sunday even began. After posting the fourth-fastest time on his first qualifying lap, the No. 6 crashed hard on the second, required unapproved adjustments, went to the rear to start and eventually finished 27th. And now the larger equation: Keselowski is 48 points below The Chase cut, only one behind Chastain and two ahead of Jones. The 2012 champ’s Richmond resume may be the most convincing track-history card anybody on the wrong side of the bubble can play right now. Keselowski won there in 2014 and 2020, finished ninth last season and also owns four O’Reilly Auto Parts Series victories at the 0.75-mile oval. His recent revival took a week off, but he can’t afford another.
Analysis: Jones’ Iowa race lasted four laps, and the timing could hardly have been worse. Running inside the top 10, he was collected when Reddick lost control entering Turn 1 and slammed the wall, finishing 35th and falling from 44 to 50 points below The Chase line. He remains only two points behind Keselowski and three behind Chastain, so the ranking may say 20th, but the actual bubble fight has barely separated those three. Richmond offers less obvious ammunition after Jones finished 26th there last season, and incremental gains are becoming increasingly useless with only three races remaining. He needs a strong couple of races. The Iowa wreck was not his doing; but what matters now is whether No. 43 can make the next three races emphatically his.
With three regular-season races remaining in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, it’s time for a check-in to see how the race for The Chase is progressing.
Reminder: The top 16 drivers in points make The Chase. There is no more win-and-in. The regular-season points leader starts The Chase with 2,100 points and second place starts with 2,075. Third place starts with 2,065 points, then drivers are separated by five-point increments through 16th place.
Somehow, Denny Hamlin and the No. 11 team persevered through an entire weekend plagued by brake issues to score a top-five finish and expand his points lead by an additional 19 points. What’s most notable, though, is who now sits behind him.
Ty Gibbs vaulted two spots in the standings into second place, 103 points behind his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate after an impressive surge to win Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway. Gibbs has ranked inside the top five in points since May, so this is no fluke from the No. 54 team. But with 10 top fives and 15 top 10s banked through 23 races, Gibbs has established himself both as a weekly contender and a true threat to win the championship.
Ryan Blaney left Iowa where he started in third place in the standings, knocking off an additional 10 points of his deficit to Hamlin’s lead. But this day could have had an even more dramatic points swing in Blaney’s favor. The 2024 Iowa winner started from pole position and won Stage 1 before finishing eighth in Stage 2. Blaney worked his way back to second place but ultimately slid to a third-place finish instead of scoring a third win of 2026.
With three races remaining, Hamlin hasn’t quite locked up the No. 1 seed in The Chase, but a triple-digit lead exiting Iowa leaves him inching closer to clinching with two great tracks ahead of him at Richmond Raceway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
The Mythical Top Six
Rank
Driver
Points
Points to leader
4
Tyler Reddick
803
-120
5
Chase Briscoe
663
-260
6
Christopher Bell
659
-264
7
Chase Elliott
657
-266
8
Carson Hocevar
644
-279
Two names in this section jump out immediately, for very different reasons: Tyler Reddick and Christopher Bell.
Reddick, once the points leader by nearly 130 markers, has endured a summer of suffering that has seemingly tanked his hopes of claiming the No. 1 seed with The Chase quickly approaching. A Lap 4 crash inside the top 10 smashed Reddick’s car into the wall at Iowa and left him 36th — last on the leaderboard — resulting in his fifth finish of 30th or worse in the last nine races. Reddick had five wins, nine top fives and 11 top 10s in the 14 races before that span. Heading to Richmond, Reddick sank two spots in the standings to his lowest points rank of 2026.
On the other end of the momentum spectrum, Bell and the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team are striking while the iron is hot. While Bell is still seeking his first win of the season, his second-place effort at Iowa launched him four spots forward in the points hunt, landing him just four points shy of fellow JGR teammate Chase Briscoe in fifth. Bell’s seventh runner-up finish of the season underscores an incredible stretch for the No. 20 team, finishing second in four of the last five Cup races.
Chase Elliott salvaged a 15th-place finish out of Iowa to minimize the points damage after incurring some literal damage in Saturday’s practice session. Elliott backed the car into the Turn 1 wall on Saturday before qualifying 32nd and was one lap down at the conclusion of Stage 1, but the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports team rallied and lost just one spot in the standings instead. Spire Motorsports’ Carson Hocevar was dealt the most notable dip in the standings, however, dropping three spots and outside the top five after both a mechanical issue and a mid-race spin at Iowa.
The Middle Ground
Rank
Driver
Points
Points to cutline
9
Chris Buescher
637
+140
10
Kyle Larson
629
+132
11
William Byron
600
+103
12
Daniel Suárez
597
+100
13
Joey Logano
586
+89
14
Bubba Wallace
565
+68
This is where the action really begins to heat up. These six drivers are separated by just 72 points with three races remaining, with more movement extremely likely before The Chase arrives in September.
Chris Buescher managed to maintain his ninth spot in the points rundown with an impressive 13th-place finish at Iowa, aided in part by a risky strategy call by crew chief Scott Graves that left the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford on track for the final 137 laps of Sunday’s race, crossing the finish line on fumes after a dismal start. Kyle Larson still can’t catch a break, on the other hand, as the No. 5 Hendrick team finished 33rd or worse for the fourth time in five weeks, this time thanks to a crash with teammate Alex Bowman that bent Larson’s right-rear toe link. Larson ultimately finished 33rd, 18 laps down, and fell two spots to the brink of the top 10. His Chase hopes seem unquestioned, but the defending series champion is in danger of a poor seed to begin his title defense in earnest.
A good-not-great day for William Byron and a disappointing performance for Daniel Suárez led to a position swap between the two after Iowa as Byron crept closer back to the top 10. Byron’s ninth-place finish marked the first top 10 for Hendrick Motorsports after an uncharacteristic three-race dry spell, leaving Byron with a triple-digit cushion above the cutline entering Richmond.
Three-time champion Joey Logano bolstered his postseason hopes with two second-place stage finishes before ultimately settling for 14th at Iowa, carrying an 89-point advantage out of the heartland despite a late pit-road miscue. Bubba Wallace may not be entirely comfortable sitting 68 points to the good with three races left, particularly without many past stats to lean on at either Richmond (one top five in 14 starts) or New Hampshire (one top five, two top 10s in eight starts), but the Toyotas still have speed.
The Cutline Battle
Rank
Driver
Points
Points to Cutline
15
Shane van Gisbergen
544
+47
16
Austin Cindric
526
+29
17
Ryan Preece
497
-29
18
Ross Chastain
479
-47
19
Brad Keselowski
478
-48
20
Erik Jones
476
-50
Now that’s what I call a points battle.
Just 68 points divide these six drivers fighting for the final two spots in The Chase. Sixteen drivers will fight for a championship while everyone else will have to claw for 17th. Shane van Gisbergen is the best of this bunch right now, but the New Zealand native will be tested again over the next two weeks. His short-track prowess took an obvious step forward at North Wilkesboro Speedway, where he led laps, earned stage points in each stage and finished fifth, but Iowa proved difficult again with a 30th-place finish. The good news is that he finished 14th at Richmond last summer and was running inside the top 10 for much of last year’s New Hampshire race before getting turned midway through.
The man at the cutline had a miserable experience at Iowa, though. Austin Cindric mustered through an afternoon with no brakes and plenty of frustration to finish 29th, two laps down, in his No. 2 Team Penske Ford as his margin above 17th-place Ryan Preece shrank by nine points Sunday afternoon. Preece had high hopes for his No. 60 RFK Racing team but qualified 35th and was lapped early before eventually scrapping his way to 20th at the checkered flag.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of this bunch, however, was Ross Chastain, who has suddenly entered the conversation from seemingly nowhere. The No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet was quick all weekend, from practice through the race, allowing Chastain to qualify inside the top 10, net stage points in each segment and ultimately finish seventh after leading 40 laps. That rocketed the 2022 championship runner-up three spots forward, placing Chastain firmly in the battle for the coveted 16th spot in the postseason.
What could have been excellent days for Brad Keselowski and Erik Jones proved dismal instead. Keselowski had posted the fourth-quickest time in qualifying but crashed entering Turn 1 on his second lap, plummeting the No. 6 Ford to the rear as his team repaired the damage to his primary car, eventually taking the checkered flag 27th, two laps down. Jones entered Iowa 18th, 44 points behind Cindric, but appeared to have one of the fastest cars of the weekend after turning the quickest lap in practice. But Reddick’s error in Turn 1 also wiped out Jones’ No. 43 Legacy Motor Club Toyota, sinking Jones two spots in the standings and eliminating any chance of chipping away at the deficit Sunday.
But within a 50-point radius entering Richmond, the fight is on for Jones and the rest of the top 20 with just a trio of races separating us from The Chase.
After a few weeks away from the track, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series returns to action on Saturday with a contest at Richmond Raceway (noon ET, FS2, FOX One, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The race is the 17th points-paying event of the 2026 Truck Series season. Corey Heim, who is piloting the No. 5 Tricon Garage Toyota this weekend, is the defending winner.
In addition to the future NASCAR Cup Series full-timer Heim, two current Cup full-timers will race this weekend: Shane van Gisbergen in the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet and Christopher Bell in the No. 62 Halmar Friesen Racing Toyota. Former Cup Series full-timer and Virginia native Elliott Sadler will drive a truck for the first time since 2011, piloting the No. 25 Kaulig Racing Ram as part of the team’s Free Agent Driver Program.
Thirty-nine race trucks are entered into the event.
After a thrilling showing at Iowa Speedway, the NASCAR Cup Series continues its short-track stretch with a date at Richmond Raceway on Saturday (7 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The race will act as the 24th points-paying event of the 2026 season. Austin Dillon is the defending winner at the 0.75-mile facility.
Josh Bilicki will pilot the No. 66 Garage 66 Ford this weekend. Bilicki piloted the No. 66 machine to a 34th-place finish at Watkins Glen International in May in his only other 2026 start.
Thirty-seven cars are entered into this weekend’s contest.
Of all the major events that take place at Berlin Raceway throughout the year, the Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin is the one every local competitor looks forward to.
A crown jewel race for Berlin since 2010, the Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin regularly draws a talented collection of national Super Late Model competitors to go up against the facility’s local drivers. All of them will be chasing the $40,000 winner’s share at the end of the 250-lap feature.
NASCAR Cup Series stars like Erik Jones, Carson Hocevar and the late Kyle Busch have all emerged victorious in the Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin through the years, but the event has also been kind to local drivers. Last year’s race saw Austin Hull take home the checkered flag. He went on to win the track championship in Berlin’s Super Late Model division that same year.
Berlin’s almost circular layout requires immense discipline to conquer, especially with nearly 30 drivers sharing the track at the same time. A victory in the Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin will not be an easy feat for the locals or invaders, but doing so will cement a driver’s place in the marquee event’s growing history.
Below is everything to know about Wednesday’s big race at Berlin.
Austin Hull enters Wednesday’s Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin as the event’s most recent winner. (Photo: Ted Malinowski/NASCAR)
What TV Channel is the Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin on?
All the on-track action for the Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin can be viewed live on FloRacing, the official streaming home for all NASCAR Regional properties.
The event will not be shown on a traditional television network.
This year’s Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin will take place on Wednesday, Aug. 12. The 250-lap Super Late Model event is the only feature on this year’s schedule.
Below is the complete race-day schedule at Berlin Raceway (all times ET).
Time
Event
9:30 a.m.
Pit Pass Window Opens
10 a.m.
Pit Area Opens
11 a.m.
Race Tires Sold and Impounded (one person per team and 5 at a time in order of registration. Time limit enforced)
12 p.m.
Super Late Model Drivers/Spotters Meeting
1 p.m.
Practice Begins/General Admission Gates Open
1-2:30 p.m.
Super Late Model Practice (Two 40-minute sessions with a 10-minute break)
3:30 p.m.
Super Late Model Tech (All Super Late Models on the ground ready to roll at 3:30 p.m. sharp.)
5:30 p.m.
Super Late Model Qualifying
6:27 p.m.
Invocation/National Anthem
6:30 p.m.
Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin Last Chance (if necessary) — 40 laps
Immediately following…
T-shirt Toss/Driver Introductions
Immediately following…
Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin — 250 laps
A healthy mix of Berlin Raceway regulars and Super Late Model stars will chase a victory in Wednesday’s Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin. (Photo: Ted Malinowski/NASCAR)
Entry list
The current entry list for the 2026 Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin currently features 30 cars.
One of the more notable surprise guests for this year’s edition is Garrett Mitchell, better known by his online persona Cleetus McFarland. Wednesday will be McFarland’s first Super Late Model start and will kick off a busy week for him at Berlin Raceway that includes hosting the Michigan 100 and Burnout Rivals Friday and Saturday.
Joining McFarland for the 250-lap feature will be NASCAR Cup Series star Carson Hocevar, who earned his first Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin victory in 2024. With three Money in the Bank 150 victories and a track championship to his name at Berlin, Hocevar will be among the favorites on Wednesday evening as he chases another triumph at his home track.
Ty Majeski, the 2023 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion, heads to Berlin this week as the most recent Money in the Bank 150 winner. A renowned Super Late Model competitor with victories in the Snowball Derby, Winchester 400 and other marquee events, Majeski looks to add a Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin triumph to his stellar resumé.
Leading the local contingent of Berlin competitors are Terry Senneker and Brian Campbell, the frontrunners in the Super Late Model standings. The two veterans have earned numerous wins at Berlin through the years, but Senneker will look to join Campbell as a Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin winner Wednesday evening.
Austin Hull, the defending Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin victor, is ready to defend his triumph from a year ago. Other competitors heading to Berlin Wednesday are Tristan McKee, Bubba Pollard, Treyten Lapcevich, Kole Raz, Kyle Steckly and Evan Shotko.
The complete entry list for the Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin can be viewed below:
Car No.
Driver
4
Tyler Lupton
5
Tristan McKee
6
Chet Monaweck
7
Joey Doiron
14
Michael Atwell
14
Chase Pinsonneault
15
Gabe Sommers
18
Chase Burda
18
Keith Herp
20
Austin Hull
22
Evan Shotko
22
Kyle Steckly
24
Terry Senneker
24
Dylan Stovall
26
Bubba Pollard
28
Scott Thomas
30
Treyten Lapcevich
32
Chris Shannon
33
Daniel Webster
33
Cleetus McFarland
39
Andrew Morrissey
46
Buddy Head
47
Brian Campbell
48
Seth Moody
53
Boris Jurkovic
57
Justin Thomas
71
Carson Hocevar
76
Kole Raz
88
Andrew Scheid
91
Ty Majeski
Race format
The field for Wednesday’s Tekton 250 Battle at Berlin will be determined by single-car qualifying. Competitors will make two consecutive laps, with the quickest of those serving as the official time.
Competition cautions will occur every 50 laps. This does not apply within 15 laps of the finish.
NEWTON, Iowa – Speed has been an issue for Trackhouse Racing throughout the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season. But Ross Chastain found the pace he had desperately been searching for at Iowa Speedway, capping the weekend with his best showing of the campaign.
“It feels so good,” Chastain said with a sigh of relief. “It was a complete weekend. The very first lap, very small changes all weekend.”
Chastain was confident in the No. 1 Chevrolet during practice and qualifying, hanging on for a ninth-place starting position in Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350, his best effort on a non-drafting track oval since early April at Bristol Motor Speedway. At the drop of the green flag, he remained competitive, placing sixth in the opening stage.
Stage 2 was even stronger for Chastain, trailing only Christopher Bell and Joey Logano at the second intermission. He collected 13 stage points on the day, as he had earned only 16 stage points total in the 40 stages that he hadn’t won entering this weekend (Chastain has four stage wins in 2026, tied for the fourth-most in Cup).
During a caution-free final stage, first-year crew chief Brandon McSwain left Chastain on track longer than all of the competition. The No. 1 car dipped to pit road for the final time on Lap 330 after leading 40 laps, his most in a single race since winning at Kansas Speedway in September 2024 (52). Chastain re-entered the track in seventh position with two fresh Goodyear tires and remained there for the final 20 laps.
The seventh-place finish tied Chastain’s best effort of the season at a non-drafting track (Naval Base Coronado). He gained 35 points on The Chase bubble, now 47 points below the cutline with three races remaining before the reset.
With a pair of shorter tracks on the horizon at Richmond Raceway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway, that speed could pay dividends over the next two events.
“I just want to enjoy this,” Chastain said. “To run in the top five, take a shot at trapping those guys. I love that McSwain swung for that. Seventh still feels really good. I don’t know about next weekend or anything, just happy for this one.”
Just over 24 hours after calling a Chase bid insurmountable because of a lack of speed, there is renewed life within the No. 1 camp. Chastain has collected two top-five finishes in his last five starts at Richmond and four top-10s in his last five starts at New Hampshire.
“If you do that four weeks in a row, you are fine,” Chastain chuckled. “I said it before the race, I don’t care about points unless the speed comes with it. That’s the speed that we’re looking for. You got to Richmond and do that again – I love it. I love the speed, so that’s what we’re working towards.”
Trackhouse Racing put two cars inside the top 11 positions at Iowa with Connor Zilisch matching his best oval finish.
NEWTON, Iowa — Entering 2026, Ty Gibbs was on the hot seat.
No, not in the literal sense of whether or not he’d pilot the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota — but a Victory Lane hot seat.
Outside noise surrounding the fourth-year Cup Series driver grew louder, wondering how long the goose egg would last in Gibbs’ Cup Series win column. Soon? Ever?
Gibbs shut that down early in the season with his maiden triumph at Bristol Motor Speedway in April, and he backed it with a statement on Sunday at Iowa Speedway, holding off hard-charging teammate Christopher Bell to earn victory No. 2 of 2026 and vaulting to second in the point standings.
Oh, how a calendar year can change perspective: Gibbs was 16th in points and outside the postseason picture after the Midwest short-track tilt in 2025. Now, he’s a legitimate threat for the Cup Series championship and still mathematically eligible to topple teammate Denny Hamlin from the No. 1 seed before The Chase begins.
“Commanders, baby.”
Gibbs touted the code name for the two-tire call (a nod to his grandfather’s NFL coaching days in Washington, D.C.) in his winner’s press conference as the decision from No. 54 crew chief Tyler Allen lofted Gibbs to the gutsy victory on a muggy Sunday outside of Des Moines.
“It was a really great day for us,” Gibbs said. “To be able to finish it off today was awesome. I’ve been in contention to win a lot of these, and it’s been so much fun this year. So just keep working hard.”
Races in contention were few and far between in his Cup Series infancy. Gibbs had just 17 combined top-five runs in his first three full-time seasons. This year, he has already crossed the double-digit mark in 2026 for the same category.
A lot of the success stems from Allen’s growth atop the box, finding his footing to lead a team at the caliber that Joe Gibbs Racing expects weekly.
“Last year was a bit of a struggle, but it was character-building,” Allen said. “I think both Ty and the team have come such a long ways and we’re finally starting to see the results and consistency across all types of race tracks. So it’s been really fun.”
After missing the postseason in 2025, Allen says the No. 54 team reset itself from the ground up and carried over last year’s information to set Gibbs up for success in 2026.
“I think we finally sort of settled in as the 54 team,” Allen said. “We rely on our teammates, all the information shared, but we’re finally building on our notebook from last year and our recent races this year, and making decisions that we think suit Ty. I think we finally got a feel for that. It takes time to get there and to get Ty’s feedback, get the engineers in tune with what Ty needs, and I think we’re really hitting that week in and week out now.”
Sean Gardner | Getty Images
Joe Gibbs has observed the lows of his grandson’s early Cup career. He put it in perspective, watching his teams and drivers over the years, understanding the difficulty of getting it right on Sundays and reaching the winner’s circle.
“From my standpoint, I think everybody here kind of followed the 54 and what all happened over our three years previous to this. It really shows you how hard our sport is,” Joe Gibbs said. “Man, I was thinking today just to win one of these races. Just so much goes into it, and to think about Denny being there with 64 of them, it’s hard for me to even believe. I think there was a lot that tested almost everybody with the 54. There really was, and I think the guys just kept working and coming through it, and I just really appreciate our people there. I have real confidence now.”
With a whole body of work to show in a 26-race regular season where wins only guarantee the sticker above the driver’s side door, a second win and a P2 placement in the standings showed the swagger and confidence Allen had to make the call to leapfrog a dominant Bell on strategy in the final stage.
Even on a gamble, Allen used data throughout the race to take the calculated risk that ultimately rewarded the team.
“It was top of mind for sure. We were leaning two tires the whole time,” Allen said. “It was a matter of when we were going to take them. We knew the 20 was getting close, and I knew (Bell’s crew chief, Adam Stevens) was leaning four (tires). So at that time, I heard the 20 say ‘pit.’ So we pit, and I took rights, knowing I would jump him and that Ty was going to have a lot of work to do.”
Title contention is just out the front windshield for the 54 team.
The numbers show Gibbs can compete with Hamlin once the Chase points reset kicks in, and there are few questions of whether the No. 54 has speed or not at certain types of tracks.
Of the Chase tracks already run on in 2026, Gibbs owns top 10s in seven of the eight venues the Cup Series will return to in the fall during the 10-race quest for the championship. His only blemish is a crash at Talladega Superspeedway to tack on a 34th-place dud.
But an average finish of 8.6 on upcoming Chase tracks is nothing to overlook. And with the synergy the No. 54 team is showing, a “Ty-tletown” headline is on the table when the checkered flag waves at Homestead-Miami Speedway in November.
“All of the Toyotas right now are really, really good, and we have to capitalize on that,” Allen said. “I’m really glad we could do that this weekend. Just a bunch of hard work. Now that we have the confidence as a team, I tell them every week we do our deal. We do our deal. We don’t need to fix anything that’s not broken right now and Ty’s done a fantastic job sticking with us and going all four (hundred) or 500 miles, whatever he needs to do. Even in adversity, we had that slow pit stop at the beginning of this race, and no one gave up. He’s doing a really good job.”
NEWTON, Iowa — Christopher Bell has seen this song before in 2026: So close, yet so far from victory.
Once again, Bell had a hot rod capable of winning, this time at Iowa Speedway. He led 108 circuits, only to watch another Joe Gibbs Racing teammate celebrate in Victory Lane, leaving him with his seventh runner-up of 2026 and fourth in the last five races. Bell has now tied Harry Gant (1981) for most runner-ups in a season without a win.
Why was this one particularly more difficult to accept than most?
“Because we had control of the race and we were leading laps, had the pace to do it, had the track position to do it and we didn’t do it,” Bell said.
As Bell became the dominant driver in the second half of the race, Adam Stevens, crew chief of the No. 20 car, called his driver to pit road for the final time on Lap 291 with Ty Gibbs in pursuit. Stevens opted to go with four fresh Goodyear tires while Tyler Allen, leader of the No. 54 bunch, gambled with a two-tire strategy.
In a caution-filled opening two stages, Stevens could almost guarantee there would be at least one additional caution to bunch the field together. There wasn’t, and while Bell got within striking distance of Gibbs, he finished 0.253 seconds from glory.
“I felt that was the right move,” Stevens told NASCAR.com. “Obviously, none of us knew it was going to stay green the rest of the day. Once [Ryan Blaney] took four (tires), which we expected him to because he did rights at the stage, and seeing how he fell off, I didn’t think that was the winning move.
“I knew that the only car that could pass us with two (tires) was (Gibbs). Everybody else, if they chose to take two, would have still come out behind us, so we tried to open up the biggest gap we could knowing that we would come out in proximity even if he did take two. I thought that would have been enough, and that covered our bases on [Blaney] and set us up better for a downstream caution.”
Allen informed Gibbs when he was hitting pit road that the No. 54 car would be on pit road for a limited time.
“At that point, I thought it was the only thing that was going to get us around [Bell],” Allen said in the winner’s post-race press conference, “and then hopefully we could get enough laps where the tires equalized, and they couldn’t get by us.”
When asked if the No. 20 team should have elected to take two tires, Bell simply said, “Yeah.”
Sean Gardner | Getty Images
Bell was not surprised that two tires hung on for the victory. He did it earlier in the race, and even stayed out on track while the bulk of the field pitted during a Lap 140 caution. He hung on for the duration of Stage 2 to bank his fourth stage victory of the season.
Stevens had the notion of taking two tires during the final green-flag pit sequence. But ultimately, being the closest car to the lead on four fresh tires was hard to pass up, thinking it would pay off over the final stint.
“Sure, it was a thought, but it wasn’t the decision I made,” Stevens said. “It was probably a 50-50 call, especially not expecting it to go fully green. I can’t say that was the wrong call to do that, but it’s not the one I made, and it didn’t work out for me.”
The tone of Bell’s 2026 campaign could be completely different had he visited Victory Lane on a few of his near misses. Instead, he has finished as the bridesmaid to all three Joe Gibbs Racing teammates this season and will enter next weekend’s race at Richmond Raceway (Sat., 7 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) on a 30-race winless drought.
Bell leaped four positions on The Chase grid at Iowa alone, however, and Stevens believes the fortune will soon flip.
“It sucks not to win,” Stevens said. “It sucks not to win every week, but you’re not going to win them all, and you’re not necessarily going to win them because you have the best car, and you’re not necessarily going to win them because you have the best car and call the best race or vice versa or one out of the two. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter.
“Some things have to go your way, and by and large on the year, they haven’t gone our way. But the year is not over. I’m hoping the math evens out before it is.”
Bell is only four markers behind Chase Briscoe for fifth in the standings. But he’s growing weary of finishing second, though still thinks a 176-lap-led stomping at Phoenix Raceway in March was tougher to digest.
“It’s bad that I can start ranking them,” Bell said.
