For the NASCAR Cup Series’ first points-paying race at North Wilkesboro Speedway since 1996, Goodyear will bring a familiar tire setup for 450 laps in the North Carolina mountains (Sun., 7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Cup teams will use a package utilized twice in the past: each of the last two races at nearby Martinsville Speedway. Additionally, the right-side tires have raced twice this year at Bowman Gray Stadium and Phoenix Raceway.
While this is a new addition to the official Cup schedule, premier series teams visited the 0.625-mile short track each of the last three years for the exhibition All-Star Race.
“Three years of All-Star Race data has helped us prepare for the NASCAR Cup Series’ first points race at North Wilkesboro in 30 years,” said Rick Heinrich, Goodyear NASCAR product manager. “The Goodyear Racing Eagle tire package we are bringing is one teams know well and is backed by years of short-track data at the likes of Martinsville, combined with what we’ve learned in previous years at North Wilkesboro, one of NASCAR’s most historic tracks.”
Meanwhile, the Craftsman Truck Series will utilize a new tire setup. The right-side tires have raced several times, including last year at North Wilkesboro, but the left-side tires are brand new. The specifications used by the tailgaiters were first introduced for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series at Phoenix Raceway, but have yet to debut in the Truck Series.
Tire allotment for each team competing this weekend:
Cup Series: 10 total sets — 8 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: 5 total sets — 3 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.
NASCAR.com’s Pat DeCola ranks the top 20 Cup Series drivers competing for the 2026 championship after Ryan Blaney’s win at EchoPark Speedway and before Sunday’s Window World 450 at North Wilkesboro Speedway (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Analysis: Hamlin’s EchoPark night was mostly damage control, and it worked well enough to keep him atop both the standings and these rankings. Starting 28th, the No. 11 never became a true win factor but salvaged 12th, added Stage 2 points and left with a 24-point advantage over Tyler Reddick — but has a hard-charging Ryan Blaney behind him who is now a concern for both. North Wilkesboro should offer considerably more upside: Hamlin finished second there in the 2024 All-Star Race and the short-track star also led 292 laps before finishing runner-up at Martinsville earlier this season. The early summer winning streak has cooled, but his command of the championship picture has not disappeared with it.
Analysis: Reddick did not reclaim the points lead at EchoPark, but he made the conversation much tighter. No. 45 charged from 31st, finished second in both stages and came home eighth, cutting Hamlin’s cushion nearly in half without ever truly controlling the race. His North Wilkesboro sample carries more promise than warning, highlighted by a third-place run in the 2023 All-Star Race and seventh there last season. Reddick is back within one strong weekend of turning the points lead again, though the short-track portion of his resume is not quite as imposing as the season built around it — or that of the guy he’s chasing.
Analysis: So much for merely occupying a sturdy third lane. Blaney obliterated the field for much of the night at EchoPark, sweeping the stages, leading 171 of 263 laps and reclaiming the top spot on the final circuit to earn his second victory of 2026 in dominant yet dramatic fashion. He has now finished in the top 10 eight straight times — the longest such streak of his career — and has thus cut a once-massive points deficit to 65. Between his Phoenix win earlier this year and top-six results in two of the past three North Wilkesboro All-Star Races, the schedule offers no obvious reason for the No. 12’s momentum to stall now.
Analysis: No. 54 did not win at EchoPark, but leading 32 laps and finishing fourth after starting 23rd while also facing the pressure of holding a provisional top-five Chase standing added another entry to the growing file labeled “serious contender, Ty Gibbs.” He now owns eight top-five finishes through 20 races, remains fourth in points and continues to extract strong days from races that initially appear headed elsewhere. North Wilkesboro is also the perfect place to revisit what Gibbs can do on a short track: He led 53 laps in the 2023 Open before finishing second, then led all 100 circuits to win it in 2024. Add his Bristol victory and Martinsville fourth earlier this season, and the No. 54 has a far stronger argument this week than merely being the youngest guy near the top.
Analysis: Elliott’s 13th at EchoPark was serviceable (he did advance in the In-Season Challenge, after all), albeit not memorable, though he briefly led and emerged from the chaos with another intact points day. The No. 9 remains fifth in the standings, but the gap between his early-season punch and current rhythm is noticeable. North Wilkesboro may be the venue that closes it: Elliott has finished fifth, eighth and fifth in the three modern All-Star Races there, and his Martinsville victory in March remains a top-tier short-track credential. Nothing about Sunday guarantees a breakthrough, but few drivers bring a cleaner combination of recent track form and 2026 short-track success.
Analysis: Bell’s climb continues, and EchoPark required him to earn every inch of it. After starting 32nd, he worked to the front, led twice, supplied the decisive push that launched Blaney toward the win and finished second for his fifth runner-up result of the season. That is a maddening number for a driver still seeking victory No. 1, but he’s clearly close, with five top fives in the last eight races. Now comes North Wilkesboro, where Bell chased down Joey Logano late to win last year’s All-Star Race. He is no longer searching for normalcy — and should be close to or at 100% this weekend in terms of his wrist injury — he is searching for the final few feet between repeated contention and finally closing on a win.
Analysis: Larson’s season continues to be a weekly exercise in finding new ways to separate speed from outcome. No. 5 ran near the front again at EchoPark, led four laps and remained in the mix deep into the night before two late incidents left him 34th and five laps down. There’s hope on the horizon, however. North Wilkesboro is not simply a potential rebound spot — it is where Larson won the 2023 All-Star Race after leading 145 laps and the Craftsman Truck Series race the same weekend after pacing 138. His broader short-track record includes six wins, 22 top fives and 36 top 10s in 66 starts. At some point, one of these tailor-made opportunities will stop turning into another paragraph about what might have been, along with his growing winless streak.
Analysis: Buescher’s 10th-place EchoPark finish was vintage No. 17: not especially noisy, but useful enough to keep the larger season picture on task. The RFK driver remains in the championship picture, though he watched faster Toyotas and Penske Fords command most of the night. North Wilkesboro has offered both ends of the spectrum — 16th in 2023, third in 2024 and 10th last season — which makes the 2024 result the more important clue given RFK Racing’s short-track capability; he can definitely get it done here. Buescher is still accumulating the body of work of a true 2026 title contender, but the only missing ingredient remains a race that unmistakably belongs to him.
Analysis: The spotlight found Hocevar before EchoPark and stayed on him until the checkered flag, yet he never appeared an ounce bothered by it. After a highly public weekend centered on his Zane Smith feud, the No. 77 led five times for 25 laps, carried the field to the white flag and finished third after one final frantic exchange with Blaney and Wallace. North Wilkesboro is hardly unfamiliar terrain: Hocevar won last year’s All-Star Open after leading the final 46 laps and finished fourth in the 2023 Craftsman Truck Series race after leading 16. He is having one of the best seasons of his young career while everybody is looking directly at him — and so far, that appears to be exactly how he likes it.
Analysis: One ugly result does not erase the Sonoma runner-up and Chicagoland victory, but Briscoe’s EchoPark crash stopped his surge cold enough to drop him three positions here. He scored points in Stage 1 and remained on the lead lap until the late pileup, ultimately finishing 36th and giving back 27 points relative to the Chase cut. His North Wilkesboro results are encouraging — all top 10s — but trending the wrong way: fourth in the 2023 All-Star Race, seventh in the 2024 Open and ninth in last year’s main event. The No. 19’s midsummer form still carries more weight than one drafting-track wipeout, but the immediate task is proving the heater survives outside its two headline weekends.
Analysis: Suárez’s EchoPark finish landed him 21st, yet the day contained more substance than that number suggests. He finished fifth in Stage 2, charged from 20th to fifth after one restart and spent portions of the middle stage looking capable of something much better before fading from contention. North Wilkesboro carries a similar split personality: Suárez led the opening 54 laps of the 2023 All-Star Race and finished seventh, then produced 15th and 23rd in the next two editions. With 91 points separating him from the cutline, he can afford a modest week; what would help more is rediscovering the version of No. 7 that dictated terms earlier this year rather than merely hoping to bank what remained.
Analysis: Byron’s Chicagoland revival did not travel cleanly to EchoPark. He started 26th, scored no stage points and finished 16th, returning the No. 24 to the murky middle ground it has occupied too often since the spring, all the while trading barbs with his crew chief. North Wilkesboro has not been a natural showcase either, though sixth place with 12 laps led last season was a substantial step forward from 20th and 19th in the previous two All-Star Races. His fifth earlier this year at Martinsville provides a stronger short-track indicator than the exhibition history alone. The talent and speed are still easy to locate; the uninterrupted run of weekends proving it lately remains far more elusive.
Analysis: SVG’s sixth-place EchoPark finish deserves more attention than it will probably receive, but it’s very much worth commending. He finished sixth in both visits to the track this season and now owns three oval top 10s in 2026, continuing to chip away at the idea that his relevance begins and ends when the schedule turns left and right. North Wilkesboro supplied another piece of that development last year, when he led the first 54 laps of the Open before Hocevar took control, while an 11th-place Martinsville run showed he can navigate a traditional — and difficult — short track without disappearing. This is not yet a weekly oval contender, but it is no longer especially wise to assume the No. 97 will be overwhelmed by one.
Analysis: Cindric quietly had one of the richest points nights around the Chase bubble at EchoPark. He finished fifth and fourth in the two stages before settling 14th, gaining five points on the cut and stretching his advantage to 32. His North Wilkesboro record is considerably less flattering — 21st, 20th in the Opens and 18th in the 2025 race the last three years — though eighth at Martinsville earlier this season offers a more current reason for confidence. No. 2 does not need to become a short-track revelation Sunday. Cindric simply cannot let one of his weakest recent venues erase the margin he just worked to create.
Analysis: Wallace crossed the line second at EchoPark and left with a 29th-place finish, which is a violent swing after an extremely long night. He led 11 laps and helped liven the race’s closing act, but NASCAR ruled that he advanced below the yellow line on the final lap and dropped him down the running order, costing him 22 points against the cut. North Wilkesboro is a far more conventional opportunity for the No. 23: Wallace finished second in the 2023 All-Star Race, sixth in 2024 and fifth in that weekend’s 2023 Truck race after leading 13 laps. The ranking drop reflects the points damage, not a disappearance of speed, and this may be one of his cleaner rebound spots left.
Analysis: Jones has gone from bubble occupant to bubble survivor, and EchoPark bought him another week of oxygen. His fifth-place finish helped him match his entire 2025 top-10 total at five and moved him eight points above Joey Logano for the final provisional Chase position. North Wilkesboro has been uneven — eighth in the 2023 All-Star Race, 18th in the 2024 Open and fourth in last year’s Open — but the most recent result at least points in the preferred direction. The Jones-led Legacy Motor Club revival does not need a trophy Sunday, but it does need another day that keeps No. 43 from handing a spot back.
Analysis: The landscape could be about to change, because here comes the track Logano has probably had circled since the schedule was released. His ninth-place EchoPark result, supported by fourth- and third-place stage finishes, pulled him to eight points below the cut and supplied another hint that Team Penske is finally gaining traction beyond Blaney. North Wilkesboro is where Logano led 199 of 200 laps to win the All-Star Race in 2024, then dominated another 139 before Bell passed him late last season. He also finished third at Martinsville this spring. For weeks, No. 22’s potential rebound has felt like a low simmer, and Sunday offers the most credible chance yet to convert it into something real.
Analysis: Preece’s EchoPark result did nothing to slow the points leak. He led one lap during the pit cycle but finished 24th, losing 22 more points against the cut and falling 26 below Jones after briefly working his way onto the good side of the line last month. North Wilkesboro is not entirely hopeless territory — Preece placed fourth in the 2023 Open, eighth in 2024 and 11th last season — and his 12th at Martinsville suggests a competent baseline. But with six races remaining, the No. 60 needs to stop producing weekends that require the next one to repair the previous one.
Analysis: Chastain re-enters after an 11th-place EchoPark run that looked modest on paper but moved him within 45 points of The Chase. That is still a substantial deficit, though not quite the dead zone it resembled earlier in the summer. North Wilkesboro has become increasingly productive for him: 11th in 2023, seventh in 2024 and third last season. Add 14 laps led at Martinsville this spring, and there is enough short-track evidence to view this as an opening rather than another survival exercise. No. 1 still needs a much bigger swing than 11th, but at least the schedule is beginning to cooperate.
Analysis: Keselowski remains last here because every supposed launch point keeps becoming another missed departure. He started 10th at EchoPark, finished 26th, scored no stage points and fell 43 below the cut despite entering a stretch built around tracks expected to suit Ford and RFK Racing. North Wilkesboro provides one last compelling historical case: Keselowski led 62 laps in last year’s All-Star Race before crashing from contention, though his other modern finishes there are 19th and 16th. The No. 6 clearly knew how to find speed at this place 14 months ago. Whether any of it survived the season-plus since is now the more urgent question.
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series transitions from the road-course confines of Lime Rock Park to the short-track North Wilkesboro Speedway on Saturday (12:30 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The race will be the 15th points-paying event of the 2026 Truck Series campaign. Chandler Smith is the defending North Wilkesboro winner.
Four NASCAR Cup Series regulars — Chase Elliott (No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet), Christopher Bell (No. 62 Halmar Friesen Racing Toyota), Shane van Gisbergen (No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet) and Carson Hocevar (No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet) — will race the circuit this weekend.
Thirty-eight race trucks are entered into this weekend’s contest.
After outlasting weather and late-night fireworks at EchoPark Speedway, the NASCAR Cup Series next contests North Wilkesboro Speedway on Sunday (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The trip to the 0.625-mile North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, track will mark the 21st points-paying event of the 2026 Cup campaign and act as the first points contest at the facility since 1996. More recently, the NASCAR All-Star Race was held at the track from 2023-25.
Round 4 of the NASCAR In-Season Challenge will occur at the track. (No. 3 seed) Ryan Blaney — who triumphed at EchoPark — will battle (No. 10 seed) Christopher Bell, while (No. 4 seed) Chase Elliott will challenge (No. 25 seed) Todd Gilliland on the opposite side of the bracket.
Thirty-seven cars are entered into this weekend’s event.
On Sunday, Austin Cindric will drive a No. 2 Freightliner Ford inspired by the iconic black-and-gold paint scheme that NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace used to sweep the 1993 races at North Wilkesboro Speedway, Team Penske announced Monday.
The throwback in honor of Team Penske’s 60th anniversary comes just in time for North Wilkesboro’s return to the NASCAR Cup Series calendar, hosting a points-paying race for the first time since 1996 on Sunday (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Wallace, the 1989 Cup Series champion and grand marshal of Sunday’s Window World 450, dominated the short tracks in 1993. Driving Team Penske’s No. 2 car some 33 years later, Cindric pays tribute to the man who built the foundation of Team Penske’s modern-day NASCAR program with a mosaic of photos across the scheme, accentuated by the names of Team Penske employees on the rear decklid.
“I think when you think of the No. 2 car, you think of Rusty Wallace. That’s the first thing you think of,” Cindric told NASCAR.com. “And obviously it’s the car, the team, the driver that really built Team Penske’s NASCAR program into what it is today, or at least a great foundation for it. So to be able to go through our 60th anniversary of Team Penske and to not have anything about Rusty Wallace, I think, would be a miss. …
“Actually talked to him (Wednesday). He’s all excited about how much he loved that car. Like, ‘Oh man, that’s a badass car!’ Like, all right, good, we’re gonna run it again. So it was cool to talk to him about that, and I think it’s gonna be great to have it out there, and most importantly, do my part in representing those colors well.”
In addition to the familiar colors will be the names of every current Team Penske employee. But four particular names will stand out: Mike Wingate, Jeffrey Thousand, Gary Brooks and Dave Munari. Each of those four worked on Wallace’s 1993 ride at Team Penske. More than three decades later, they’re still making a difference inside the shop walls in Mooresville, North Carolina.
“When you walk in the employee entrance at Team Penske, there’s a big board that has the 10-year and 20-year-plus employees on the board, and there’s a lot of names on that board,” Cindric said. “And I don’t think there’s too many race teams that have the success and the history that Team Penske has, but there’s not too many race teams that have that kind of tenure, that kind of workforce that can really provide championship-level experience. But also through the years and through the changes and how everything’s gone, I mean, those guys that you mentioned, I know most all of them. I see them every day. Those guys are still playing a very active role in the race shop, building our race cars. So as much as they are part of the furniture here, they are definitely still part of the workforce to make things happen and make these Ford Mustangs go fast.”
The quartet of employees remembers their 1993 campaign with Wallace fondly, and for good reason. Wallace earned a career-high 10 wins that year, sweeping races at both North Wilkesboro and Rockingham Speedway en route to a runner-up finish in the points standings.
Munari, then a fabricator and windshield cleaner on the No. 2 car, remembers the April race at North Wilkesboro particularly well for a radio conversation between Wallace and crew chief Buddy Parrott.
“Wilkesboro was the worst for traffic, but Rusty could really get through traffic,” Munari said in a teleconference. “I’ll tell you a little funny story about the Wilkesboro race, the spring race. Buddy Parrott was the crew chief, and we’d run 30 laps. We’re leading the race. Buddy said, ‘Rusty, come in here and pit for four tires.’ He said, ‘Buddy, are you crazy? We’ve only run 30 laps!’ He said, ‘I said get in here.’ We come in, change four tires. Rusty went out and just about lapped the second-place car. That’s how much tires meant. So we run about 20 laps, and Rusty goes, ‘Hey, Buddy, is it time to put tires on yet?’ ”
Bill Hall | Getty Images
Together, Munari, Wingate, Thousand and Brooks represent a key quality of Team Penske’s long-tenured success: long-tenured employees. Each has remained with the company for more than half of Team Penske’s entire existence. For a company celebrating 60 years on the track, that says plenty.
“We have an owner that loves racing,” Thousand said. “And with that being said, he’s going to give us all the resources that we need to perform. Not to say (you don’t have your) typical ups and downs with racing, but we knew from the get-go with Roger supporting Team Penske that what we needed, we were going to get.”
Brooks had previously worked for Ranier Racing in 1980 and 1981, J.D. Stacy’s team in 1982 and ’83 and Precision Products Racing from 1984 through 1990 before joining Penske in 1991.
“When I first came to work here, just getting a chance to go to work for Roger Penske meant a whole lot to me. I always wanted to do that,” Brooks said. “I worked for other teams, and whenever they (Penske) would show up, you’d sit there and see them unload the stuff they had and the equipment they had, and whatever. It was like, man, look at that. These guys have got it going on over there. So that’s what enticed me to actually just want to be here and take the job, and then it’s just caliber of the people. Everybody tries to do their best at whatever you’re doing, and that always makes you still try to do the best that you can do at whatever it is you’re doing. And it doesn’t matter what job it is. It takes everybody to make the whole thing click. And just being part of that, being a part of the camaraderie of all the guys, they work hard to do whatever, it’s just part of it, and I enjoy being here.”
Cindric is still seeking his first win of 2026 but knows the short tracks and superspeedways are where Team Penske has generally excelled. He’s not relying on past success heading into Sunday night’s feature race, but he will be using those notes to prepare for an important showing as driver of Team Penske’s flagship car — a No. 2 entry that represents the brunt of Team Penske’s success, including a combined 82 wins between Wallace (37), Brad Keselowski (34), Kurt Busch (eight) and Cindric (three) to pair with Keselowski’s 2012 Cup Series championship.
“For me, the biggest win is getting the employees involved and it being a home race in a lot of sense,” Cindric said. “I mean, you think of Charlotte being a home race, but this is still very much a home race to have this all in-house and be able to thank the people that really make Team Penske what it is.”
HAMPTON, Ga. — Carson Hocevar’s week began with fresh scrutiny and ended with an unlikely soundtrack. Following another stretch in the eye of the NASCAR Cup Series storm, the Spire Motorsports driver could be heard belting out Cutting Crew tunes while leading late in the Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart, a lighthearted finish to an otherwise turbulent week.
As the field prepared for the overtime restart, Hocevar’s spotter, Tyler Green, cued up the 1980s pop-rock band’s signature hit “(I Just) Died in Your Arms” over the No. 77 radio. Hocevar couldn’t help but belly laugh before refocusing on the task at hand: trying to hold off a dominant Ryan Blaney for the win at EchoPark Speedway. Blaney eventually prevailed in NASCAR Overtime, with Hocevar eventually settling for a respectable third.
“I just hang out and start passing them one at a time, get to the front and start laughing about it,” Hocevar said. “The guys started playing music on the radio, and I was laughing my ass off. It’s a really fun night.”
Hocevar was a contender throughout the race. After finishing sixth in the opening stage, he appeared poised to score more stage points in Stage 2 before getting caught in what his crew chief Luke Lambert described as a “bad aero situation,” causing him to tumble to 29th.
Once the final stage began, however, Hocevar quickly soared up the leaderboard.
“He has got a knack for it. He studies it a lot,” Lambert told NASCAR.com of Hocevar’s ability at drafting tracks. “He has a natural talent and is able to read situations at a little bit higher level than most guys. There’s other guys that can do it, but it’s a small group that can operate that he’s able to operate here. This track, in particular, has a good balance of driving the car really hard and keeping the intensity level up for a long period of time. It suits him.”
Coming to the overtime restart, Hocevar controlled the field with Tyler Reddick in tow behind him on the outside line. The inside lane was led by Blaney, who led 171 laps — the most in a drafting race since Richard Petty paced the field for 184 laps in the 1964 Daytona 500 — and won the first two stages. Behind him was his ally, Bubba Wallace.
A push from Reddick down the backstretch gave Hocevar the lead at the white-flag lap. But the Nos. 12 and 23 cars got reconnected down the frontstretch, with Blaney going wide around the No. 77 Chevrolet. Down the backstretch, Wallace swooped below the yellow line — which ultimately resulted in a penalty — and Christopher Bell gave Blaney one final push to propel him to the checkered flag.
Hocevar crossed the start/finish line in fourth during the wee hours of Monday morning but was later credited with a podium effort, with Wallace getting bumped to the final car on the lead lap in 29th.
Hocevar was having flashbacks to the spring 2025 race in the Atlanta suburb, another thrilling three-wide finish that he barely lost to Bell.
“I could block the second car; it was way too big of a run to block the first guy,” Hocevar said. “I got three-wide somewhere, and you are trying to figure out where you’re going to end up based on the pusher behind me — and it’s all Toyotas. I was like, ‘[Expletive], they are not pushing me.’ It was fun, a good time. We were up front in contention for another win.”
Hocevar has been a threat at all four drafting tracks thus far in 2026. He has led parts of the final lap in three of the four to date, scoring his first Cup victory in late April at Talladega Superspeedway.
“I’m super confident in the moves I make,” Hocevar said of his superspeedway success.
The 39-point effort elevated Hocevar to eighth in the regular-season standings, leapfrogging Chase Briscoe with six races remaining before The Chase.
Known for its chaos, EchoPark Speedway didn’t completely destroy brackets like it did last year in the In-Season Challenge, but it did take down No. 2 seed Denny Hamlin, whom many (myself included) had picked to go all the way and win the $1 million. That’s because No. 10 seed Christopher Bell put up another podium finish, good enough to oust his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate who came home 12th in the Quaker State 400.
Here’s where things stand in the In-Season Challenge as the NASCAR Cup Series gets ready for its first points-paying race at North Wilkesboro Speedway since 1996 in Sunday’s Window World 450 (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
EchoPark race winner: Ryan Blaney may have just delivered his best performance to date as he swept his way to a dramatic overtime win near Atlanta, scoring 75 points and leading 171 laps in the type of superspeedway dominance not seen since 1964 with Richard Petty. But it wasn’t just the sheer numbers that were impressive; it was the way Blaney handled the pressure of multiple drivers trying to hunt him down — and who sometimes overtook him — while he patiently waited for his opportunity to pounce. He said it was that patience, learned from Dale Earnhardt Jr. and other great drafting-track drivers, that was foremost in his mind when the chips were down last night/this morning at EchoPark.
Blaney’s first-place finish was, of course, enough to knock off William Byron, a two-time winner at EchoPark Speedway, who finished 16th with an ill-handling No. 24 Chevrolet that he expressed frustration with to crew chief Rudy Fugle over the team radio.
Who advances to Round 4?
Advancing alongside the No. 3 seed Blaney and the No. 10 seed Bell were the No. 4 seed Chase Elliott and the No. 25 seed Todd Gilliland. Elliott’s 13th-place finish was a bit of a disappointment for the two-time EchoPark Speedway winner and hometown Georgia favorite who had moments of dominance throughout the race, but it was enough to knock off No. 12 seed Chase Briscoe, who got caught up in a multicar melee that sent him to the garage for good.
Meanwhile, Gilliland finished 19th and edged out No. 32 seed Alex Bowman in 22nd place to take over the role as Cinderella in this tournament. Gilliland’s best performance in the In-Season Challenge was a 16th-place finish at Chicagoland Speedway, but he’s done just enough to get by in all his matchups to date.
Matchup of the week
(No. 3) Ryan Blaney vs. (No. 10) Driver: Christopher Bell: This could be an old-school donnybrook, as each driver has a strong history on tracks less than one mile long. In the last 10 races on such tracks, Blaney leads all drivers in points, while Bell isn’t too far behind in sixth place. But those stats don’t include Bell’s victory in last year’s All-Star Race held at North Wilkesboro. Plus, Bell is riding a streak of three straight top-five finishes and is still hungry for a win in 2026.
Who’s up
Ryan Blaney, No. 12 Team Penske Ford. It might sound like a broken record, but it has to be Blaney owning this category. He’s coming off his best win and is taking a streak of eight straight top-10 finishes into the foothills of the Appalachians.
Who’s down
Todd Gilliland, No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford. In all fairness, nobody who has advanced this far in the In-Season Challenge is really “down,” but Gilliland will likely have the toughest road to advance from here. He has four top-10 finishes in 25 career short-track races, while his opponent, Elliott, has two wins and an average finish of 11.9 in 60 short-track starts.
Ford Racing celebrated a major milestone in its NASCAR journey early Monday morning, when Ryan Blaney rolled to victory and clinched the manufacturer’s 750th Cup Series win.
Blaney’s dominant triumph in the Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart at EchoPark Speedway marked the 19th win of his Cup Series career — all with Team Penske and all in Fords. The Roger Penske-owned organization has contributed 109 wins to the automaker’s Cup Series tally.
“Yes, it’s really special to be just a small part of that,” Blaney said. “They’ve been incredibly great to me over my career. Gosh, been with them since 2013 when Penske switched from Dodge. They’ve been great people. Really been able to get to know a lot of folks over there, whether it was the racing program or Ford Motor Company. (CEO) Jim Farley is a great leader. Mark Rushbrook (global director, Ford Racing) is fantastic on the Ford Racing side.
“It’s been fun to have success with those folks. At the end of the day, they’re racers. That’s what that company was built on. To be successful and to win for that and add to the success they’ve had in the Cup Series means a lot.”
Fords have been driven to 12 Cup Series championships, including Blaney’s 2023 title. That list began in 1965 with NASCAR Hall of Famer Ned Jarrett, who scored 43 of his 50 Cup Series wins driving Fords, making him the winningest of the 91 drivers who have posted Cup victories for the manufacturer.
That all-time list of Ford winners dates back to June 25, 1950, in just the second season for NASCAR’s top division. Ohio native Jimmy Florian drove a No. 27 Ford to a popular home-state victory at Dayton Speedway’s half-mile asphalt oval.
Florian drove shirtless that day because of the especially warm and muggy conditions. The primitive NASCAR Rule Book of the era had no formal uniform guidelines prohibiting him from doing so.
HAMPTON, Ga. — You could fill a pretty sizable bus with guys who thought they had a shot at beating Ryan Blaney Sunday — sorry, make that Monday — in the Quaker State 400.
There was Chase Elliott. Christopher Bell. A late-charging Shane van Gisbergen, who was so sharp he might have thought he was road racing. Ty Gibbs. Bubba Wallace. And Carson Hocevar, who, with a win, would have completed a wacky, controversial weekend in an unlikely spotlight.
All pushed into or near first place at some point in the final stage, but the critical moments — and the final lap — were controlled by Blaney. With his bushy mustache arriving at the finish line perhaps before the rest of his body, the 32-year-old former Cup Series champion put on one of the finest performances of the season — and of his career — in winning for the second time this year.
In the sometimes frantic racing that colored the closing miles, with pretenders firing at him from every lane and every angle, even occasionally taking over the lead, Blaney never wilted. He had enough strength and presence of mind at the end to win by 0.068 seconds, leaving Wallace, Bell and Hocevar in a three-wide battle behind him. (After the race, Wallace was penalized for dropping below the double-yellow inside line while passing, sliding him to 29th place).
Elliott, Gibbs, Hocevar and others powered past Blaney’s Ford to take the lead at various junctures, but Blaney, in a car crew chief Jonathan Hassler called one of the best the team has built, bounced back to lead every time. He led 171 of the race’s 263 laps, almost matching an odd sort of record — laps led on a drafting-style track. Richard Petty led 184 laps in winning the 1964 Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway when it was the only “drafting-style” track.
“He would take his medicine and make moves to get back to the front,” Hassler said of the scattered occasions when Blaney lost the lead.
Blaney said his car was “incredibly fast leading. I could defend moves without having to throw low-percentage blocks. Some moves at you are unbeatable as the leader. I let them go and thought I could develop a run to get them back.”
Blaney called that sort of work “managing the lanes.”
The only downside of Blaney’s accomplishment might be the fact that most of his younger fans probably were in deep slumber when he crossed the finish line at 1:45 a.m. ET. The 400 was such a long race that it started on one day and ended on another. He was still answering media questions about the win at 3 a.m.
Rain, rarely a friend to the race car driver or the race promoter, was expected Sunday night at EchoPark Speedway, and that expectation was met. A few minutes after the race was stopped after 108 laps because of lightning popping from nearby storm clouds, the rain arrived in great swaths, soaking the racing surface, pit road and any fans who had been slow to seek shelter.
It rained hard enough and long enough to force a three-hour, nine-minute delay.
Among the results — two different races on two different days. When green-flag racing resumed at 12:01 a.m. Monday, quite deep into the night, the super-fast track surface was a new animal, cooler and a somewhat different challenge, at least until the field put down enough laps to return it to something like normal.
Blaney beat the rain, the track changes, the tension that comes automatically with an overtime finish and even a late-race moment when his ride briefly threatened everything he had done. He bounced lightly off the wall with 30 laps to go, causing a vibration and accelerating heartbeats in the Team Penske pit.
It turned out that the only significant damage was to the hopes of the pretenders.
For Ford, burdened by a 15-race winless string, the racing both before and after midnight was a great salve to what has been a tough season. It also was a big boost for Blaney and his team, which has pushed through some pit-road issues and now is making a run at the No. 1 seed in The Chase.
HAMPTON, Ga. – When the checkered flag finally flew over Sunday’s — and Monday’s — Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart at EchoPark Speedway, Bubba Wallace believed he had secured a runner-up finish. Instead, NASCAR assessed a post-race penalty for advancing his position below the yellow line on the final lap, dropping the No. 23 Toyota to the last car on the lead lap.
Wallace was credited with a 29th-place effort, a massive 27-point swing.
“[The rule] says advancing your position, which I did not do,” Wallace said to a group of media members after the penalty was issued. “I stayed third, and I was all over the brakes to make sure I did not advance. As soon as I turned, I was like, ‘I am going to wreck.’ I got on the brakes, kept it underneath me and still ended up side-by-side.
“That move should have propelled us to the lead, and it didn’t because I knew it was wrong because my car did not like that move. We will see what we can do, but I did not advance my position. I stayed third from the entry to three, all the way until 50 yards away, [Ty Gibbs] gave us a shot.”
Wallace took the white flag in third position and shoved Ryan Blaney to the race lead entering Turn 1. As the No. 12 car swung high on Carson Hocevar, the No. 23 Toyota darted to the bottom down the backstretch, making it three-wide for the top spot. In the process, he dropped below the yellow line and remained next to Hocevar and Blaney through Turns 3 and 4, when a shove from Christopher Bell propelled Blaney to the victory.
“You go back and look at the SMT; I’m on the brakes trying to keep it underneath me and not advance my position,” Wallace added. “We’ve seen that in the past, all day, two cars get side by side into the corner, the guy that pops bottom — clears. I didn’t clear, and that’s why we didn’t win the race, because I had to bail because I was going to crash. We will talk to the team to figure out what we want to do.”
Wallace bolted over to his 23XI Racing hauler to review the data with No. 23 crew chief Charles Denike and Dave Rogers, director of competition for 23XI Racing. After briefly evaluating their case, the trio walked to the NASCAR hauler for a 31-minute meeting with NASCAR officials.
Case closed.
It was deemed official that Wallace violated Sections 8.7.2.A of the NASCAR Rule Book. The rule states, “Passing below the double painted lines to advance position will result in a black flag.”
“A penalty is a penalty,” Wallace said as he departed the series hauler.
The final-lap penalty cost Wallace 27 points alone. Add in the points he lost at the end of Stage 2, when Gibbs bumped him out of sixth coming to the green-white-checkered finish, and it made for a costly race, tallying a mere nine points despite racing at the front for the bulk of the evening, including 11 circuits ahead of the field.
After the race, Wallace and Gibbs met on pit road.
“I just said lift,” Wallace noted after having a post-race discussion with his Toyota quasi-teammate. “I said there’s an opportunity to give, and you didn’t. He was like, ‘Well, don’t block me.’ It’s like, bro, you hit me square in the bumper. The block was well ahead; you seen it coming.”
On the final lap, it was a shove from Gibbs that propelled Wallace into the runner-up spot before the penalty was assessed. Gibbs went over to apologize for the Stage 2 mishap but didn’t enjoy the interaction.
“I went to tell him sorry because he cleared himself and then, unfortunately, he showed a lot of disrespect,” Gibbs stated. “It seems like it didn’t work out for him. I tried to help him out there at the end and push him to win.”
With the 29th-place showing, Wallace has finished outside the top 20 in six of the last nine events. He remains 13th in the regular-season standings, 55 points above the cutline. He lost 22 points to The Chase cutline at EchoPark.
“Everyone behind us in points is like, ‘Oh, 23,’ “Wallace said. “They see that and are licking their chops. With the position that we are in, we’re not safe.”
