Starting at Sonoma, NASCAR’s In-Season Challenge will return for 2026, giving fans an opportunity to enjoy their own motorized version of March Madness (except of course it takes place in June and July).
I was surprised to learn that, while the seeds were set after last weekend’s race at Pocono, the In-Season Challenge won’t immediately start this weekend. I guess NASCAR’s belief is that this weekend’s action at Naval Base Coronado will be exciting enough. And, honestly, I wouldn’t argue that they are wrong.
Last year’s In-Season Challenge turned out to be quite a fun endeavour, with the finale coming down to a battle of the Tys: Ty Gibbs and the surprising bracket-buster Ty Dillon, with the Joe Gibbs Racing Ty getting the tournament win.
Having participated in “the Milner Cup,” the annual Stanley Cup playoff tournament contest at one of my old workplaces and having really fallen in love with pro wrestling while watching the 1985 Wrestling Classic, I have always enjoyed a good tournament. In fact, in last year’s column about the In-Season Challenge, I opined that, with one major caveat, this was this type of format that should be how NASCAR decides its championships.
Of course, Canadian fans can’t officially play along for the prize money, but that won’t stop me from filling out my own bracket and making my predictions. Note: I went through and made my initial picks based on my gut instinct (although I favoured the road course aces in the first round and did a bit of wild card picking at EchoPark). Afterwards, I consulted DriverAverages.com to see who was strong at the tracks of the tournament. Even then, I decided against some struggling drivers (Keselowski, Logono) and had to make educated guesses with limited data for Chicagoland and no data for North Wilkesboro.
First Round – Sonoma:
- Tyler Reddick over Alex Bowman
- Austin Cindric over Brad Keselowski – Almost reversed this save Brad’s struggles this year
- Daniel Suarez over Todd Gilliland
- Carson Hocevar over Zane Smith
- AJ Allmendinger over Chase Briscoe – Gave the nod to Allmendinger on a road course
- Ty Gibbs over Austin Dillon
- Michael McDowell over Bubba Wallace – Gave the nod to McDowell, with better results at Sonoma and the road courses
- Chase Elliott over Noah Gragson
- Denny Hamlin over Ty Dillon – I don’t think Ty can pull off the upset over Denny this year
- Erik Jones over Joey Logano – Logano has the better results but he’s struggling this year
- Chris Buescher over John Hunter Nemechek
- Christopher Bell over Ross Chastain
- William Byron over Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.
- Kyle Larson over Riley Herbst
- Shane Van Gisbergen over Ryan Preece – Hard to vote against SVG
- Ryan Blaney over Josh Berry – For some reason I almost went with Berry here
Second Round – Chicagoland:
- Tyler Reddick over Austin Cindric
- Daniel Suarez over Carson Hocevar – Was tempted to bring Carson through but he has no experience at Chicagoland and teammate Suarez is having a great year
- Ty Gibbs over AJ Allmendinger
- Chase Elliott over Michael McDowell
- Denny Hamlin over Erik Jones – This is not the easy pick you might think, as Hamlin and Jones have similar average finishes at Chicagoland
- Chris Buescher over Christopher Bell
- Kyle Larson over William Byron
- Ryan Blaney over Shane Van Gisbergen – It’s SVG vs. Blaney on an oval, easy pick here
Third Round – EchoPark:
- Tyler Reddick over Daniel Suarez
- Chase Elliott over Ty Gibbs
- Denny Hamlin over Chris Buescher
- Ryan Blaney over Kyle Larson – This might be controversial but nod to Blaney
Fourth Round – North Wilkesboro:
- Chase Elliott over Tyler Reddick – Although I could really see this going the other way to set up Reddick vs. Hamlin in the final
- Denny Hamlin over Ryan Blaney
Champions Round – Indianapolis:
- Denny Hamlin over Chase Elliott
I think this year’s In-Season Challenge will, much like last year, be a mixture of results that you can see coming even before the drop of the green flag with some upsets along the way and I think my picks reflect that. I guess we’ll see in July.
johnmilner.ca 