For the second season of its in-season challenge tournament, NASCAR is changing how drivers are seeded and qualify for the tournament, shifting away from the race-based format used in 2025.
Last summer, NASCAR debuted a new In-Season Challenge tournament, which pitted drivers head-to-head across five races during the summer stretch of the season for a $1 million grand prize.
To set the field for the inaugural running of the In-Season Challenge, NASCAR opened up spots for the top 32 drivers in Cup Series points following the June 1 race at Nashville Superspeedway. After which, the field was set via three seeding races leading up to the first race of the tournament at EchoPark Speedway in Atlanta.
Unfortunately, the logic behind seeding was confusing, as it was based on a driver’s best finish of the final three races on Prime Video in 2025.
Of course, this format created a lot of tie-breaking scenarios.
To fix this, tiebreakers would be based on next best finish, and then season points, with Denny Hamlin, who won third and first in his two starts in the three seeding races, taking the No. 1 spot.
This year, NASCAR is taking a step back from this complex seeding and will, as of press time, set the 32-driver field based on points position after the June 14 race at Pocono Raceway, giving race fans a better look at the projected seeding leading into this year’s tournament.
Though seeding will set after Pocono, the debut street race at San Diego’s Naval Base Coronado will not be part of the seeding process.
This builds up a gap between the end of seeding and the start of the tournament on June 28 at Sonoma Raceway. Sonoma is one of three tracks returning to the In-Season Challenge this year, as the Chicago Street Race and Dover Motor Speedway are not hosting points races this season.
In their place, Chicagoland Speedway and North Wilkesboro Speedway join the in-season challenge:
2026 NASCAR Cup Series In-Season Challenge Schedule:
Last season, the event came down to an unlikely battle of Ty’s, as Joe Gibbs Racing’s Ty Gibbs went head-to-head with Ty Dillon for the $1 million during Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Brickyard 400. Gibbs would win out, finishing 21st to Dillon’s 28th.
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