NASCAR returned to the Poconos for the final seeding race of its new In-Season Challenge. With a triple-header race weekend, storylines and drama popped up all over Pennsylvania. So, who were the biggest losers from NASCAR’s weekend at Pocono Raceway?
This weekend marked Christopher Bell’s second-worst finish in a NASCAR Cup Series race after leading more than 50 laps. This 18th-place finish is far off from his 36th-place finish after leading 131 laps at Nashville last season. To add insult to injury, Bell spun twice while leading or going for the lead, something so out of character that fans (jokingly) began asking if he was washed.
Listen, winning three in a row was awesome earlier this season, but Bell’s fall of late in the season needs to be studied. With 12 career wins since 2023, Bell has won only one race after the halfway mark in a season. While Bell is a star of the sport, the No. 20 team needs to learn how to win late if they want to walk away with a title (at least in this format).
Well, this one hit like a ton of bricks. So let’s give a short eulogy for Our Motorsports.
Our Motorsports began racing on the NASCAR National Series level in 2020. The team made its name as a true competitor right off the bat, showing signs of a future winner, similar to Sam Hunt Racing and Jordan Anderson Racing. But those hopes are gone, as on Friday, the team announced it was closing up shop.
This announcement followed the removal of the team’s former full-time driver, Kris Wright, from last weekend’s entry sheet. Though Wright’s terrible 2025 was a story of the season, it’s important to remember Our as a true underdog story in the series, rather than this shell of their former selves we saw in 2025. There will be more underdog teams, but this team seemed like something special, and it is a true shame they are gone.
NASCAR fans lost out this week, so we are going to talk about the weather for a minute.
Dover Motor Speedway’s luck with rain has got to be one of the worst in NASCAR. While fans were treated to a normal Dover Race weekend last year, including a packed crowd, this weekend, despite a new race date, saw weather cancel Cup Series practice and qualifying, end the Xfinity Series race early, and heavily affect the Cup Series race.
This is not an ‘old man shouts at clouds’ situation. NASCAR, despite its best efforts (probably), cannot control the weather. But in a world where pre-race activity is cut down so much compared to the past, it is a shame that a track like Dover has to suffer so much.
Chase, I don’t know what you heard, but the Winston Cup points system no longer exists, so consistency probably isn’t getting you anywhere.
Yesterday, Chase Elliott led the second-most laps of his career. Now, notably, Chase has led over 100 laps in 14 of his career 343 races, but he has only won two races when leading over 100 laps. We can talk about stratagey from yesterday, but it’s more important to focus on Chase’s season as a whole.
In the playoff era, consistency doesn’t matter, winning does, and the No. 9 is almost allergic to winning. While Chase is perhaps the most consistent driver at HMS over the past two seasons, averaging an 11.09 finish since the 2024 Daytona 500, he needs to add to the win column if he wants to return to championship form.
If Kevin Harvick is the closer, let’s say Trevor Hoffman. Chase Elliott is more of a middle-inning guy. Yeah, he’ll get you through the top of the order, but do not expect him to win the ball game.
Well, the Kris Wright saga is over, for now, and no one seems better off for it. During his time behind the wheel of the No. 5, Our Motorsports fell from a consistent finisher to a laughing stock of the field. For Kris, scoring such a ride netted him a career-best finish of 9th (after half the field crashed at Martinsville) and stacks upon stacks of bad PR.
Returning to our remembrance of Our Motorsports, it is frustrating to think that some of NASCAR fans’ final memories of the team will be Wright crashing into Josh Bilicki at Daytona, or costing Justin Allgaier the win at Texas. All while Anthony Alfredo, a fan favorite driver, was sent to another, slightly less accomplished, team, where he outpaced the No. 5 team for the entirety of the season.
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