NASCAR Cup Series Debuts Season Tournament
Starting next weekend at the Quaker State 400 in Atlanta, the NASCAR Cup Series joins other sports leagues, such as European soccer and the NBA, in launching its own in-season tournament to add more excitement to the regular season. The seeding for the inaugural [In-Season Challenge](https://www.nascar.com/news-media/2025/06/22/in-season-challenge-seeding-update-after-pocono/) was based on a series of three races (Michigan, Mexico City, and Pocono), using a combination of best results and points earned. Now, 32 drivers are seeded in a [single-elimination bracket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_NASCAR_In-Season_Challenge#Bracket), ready to face off head-to-head until one is crowned champion and takes home a $1 million check.This guide will help you understand the field, favorites, dark horses, and winners or losers of the qualifying process. To do this, a renewed version of the Cup Series playoff prediction model has been used, which simulates the tournament 2,000 times and estimates the chances of advancement for each driver.
Contents
Favorites
With the board and the odds in hand, let’s take a close look at how the field is shaping up.Despite being ranked 18th after poor results in two of the three qualifying races, William Byron has been the best Cup driver this season, leading the standings and the Driver Rating, making him the biggest threat to win.
The two-time defending Daytona 500 champion will have a favorable matchup in the first round against Ryan Preece, and could face less consistent road course drivers in both Round 2 (Chase Briscoe) and Round 3 (Kyle Larson), and would face a lower oval driver (Chris Buescher) in the Championship 4 if things got that far. Byron should be the favorite every step of the way to the championship.If we delve into the field, Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Briscoe, Buescher, and Larson also have a 5% or greater chance. Of them, Hamlin and Elliott have the best chances of making it to the Sweet 16, having obtained uneven matchups in the first round with the Dillon brothers.
Elliott also has the best chance of reaching the Elite 8, as he would face John Hunter Nemechek or Josh Berry, neither of whom is good on road courses, in Round 2.
The Cinderellas
If we consider Byron a “Cinderella” due to his low ranking, he has, by far, the best chances of reaching and/or winning the championship round of any driver in that category. But it seems strange to call a driver ranked number 1 an underdog. Similarly, Logano and Tyler Reddick have the next best odds from that group, but the former is the current Cup Series champion and the latter was in last year’s Championship 4; neither would surprise with a deep run, although Reddick would have to get past Larson and then (very likely) Blaney right away. On the other hand, could we consider Ty Gibbs an unexpected bet? He is 23rd in the overall standings… but he is also the number 6 seed in the In-Season Challenge bracket, and his performance has been on the rise lately. Winnable matchups with Justin Haley and Michael McDowell could take Gibbs to the Round of 8, which would seem expected (given his ranking) and surprising (given his performance level to date). If we limit ourselves to the drivers currently in 15th place or lower in both the Challenge standings and the regular standings, four drivers have a 10% or greater chance of winning at least two rounds: Austin Cindric, A.J. Allmendinger, Kyle Busch, and Brad Keselowski. All are known as aces on drafting-type circuits or road courses (or in Cindric’s case, both), and those circuits make up each of the first three races of this tournament. Longtime championship rivals, Busch and Keselowski, can’t make deep runs, facing off in Round 1, but the winner would likely catch Hamlin on a road course, while Cindric and Allmendinger would be on a possible collision course at Sonoma in the Round of 8.Spoilers
Sometimes, it’s not so much about winning the title as it is about being a thorn in the side of the favorites. In this picture, that could be the case for Keselowski, Reddick, Erik Jones, and Carson Hocevar, each of whom has at least a 44% chance of defeating the drivers who are better ranked here and higher in the 2025 Cup standings. We already mentioned Brad K’s battle with Busch, but Reddick is a solid plate racer with a real chance to end Larson’s race immediately, while there’s an approximate 50% chance that Jones or Hocevar will outperform Ross Chastain or Blaney, respectively, and almost a 21% chance that both will advance. Looking ahead, we could see Logano giving Bubba Wallace trouble in the second round if Joey survives Alex Bowman in Round 1, as Bubba is not a strong road course driver. Also, McDowell would be almost a coin flip to defeat Gibbs in a Round 2 fight between drivers who have shown aptitude for making left and right turns during their careers. And if we ignore the rankings for a moment, Briscoe has the potential to turn Byron from favorite into a late thought if he has a good race on the streets of Chicago. Briscoe ran well with a Driver Rating of 96.3 in the last road course race, in Mexico City a few weeks ago.The Tough Confrontations
In contrast to spoilers, some good drivers simply landed in a bad spot thanks to the qualifying formula. Preece could be example A: he has had a very successful season, but finished in 15th place, while Byron’s 27th place finish at Pocono left him in 18th place, directly in Preece’s path. The underdog could still win, as Atlanta is a comparatively chaotic track now, but it’s somewhat difficult to start the In-Season Challenge against the qualifying leader. Bowman also fits that mold: he is ranked eighth, which matches the number 25 in a field of 32 drivers. But, unfortunately for him, that means facing Logano in a place where Joey won in last year’s playoffs and is always a threat. If Bowman wins, he would get his own favorable draw against Bubba Wallace as a much better road course driver in Round 2, but first he has to get through Round 1.Then there’s the way rankings can lie about the relative quality of drivers. Zane Smith is ranked 14th, but would be the underdog almost anywhere against Cindric, particularly in Atlanta, where Cindric had a streak of five straight races finishing 12th or better from 2022 to 2024. Similarly, Nemechek got Berry in Round 1, a qualifying anomaly that doesn’t really reflect how they’ve done throughout the season.
And although they are still favorites to advance beyond Round 1, the trio of Chastain, Blaney, and Larson may not have it as easy as we might think at first glance. For Ross, that’s because drafting tracks are a clear weakness in his driving portfolio, which puts him on comparatively unstable ground immediately in his matchup against Jones. And for Blaney and Larson, their respective first-round opponents (Hocevar and Reddick) are tougher than the rest of the Top 10 (except Bowman) have to face. Not only that, but even if both favorites win, Blaney and Larson will have to face each other in Round 2, very possibly for the right to face Byron in Round 3. And maybe that’s the point. In this format, even the big names aren’t guaranteed more than a single race in contention before the field starts to mix it all up. With its chaotic classification and track types, as well as the inherent unpredictability of single-elimination races, this new In-Season Challenge promises to be as wild and experimental as anything NASCAR has tried in years, which really says a lot for this sport.
