The second annual NASCAR In-Season Challenge tournament got underway on Sunday afternoon at Sonoma Raceway. But several drivers, including one who finished inside the top 10, were not included in the 32-driver bracket and are therefore ineligible for the tournament championship.
NASCAR changed how they determine the seeding and the first-round matchups after the 2025 method, which involved a cutoff race for the top 32 in the standings and then each of those 32 drivers' top finishes during a stretch of three races, was widely deemed too unnecessarily confusing.
This time around, NASCAR simply took the top 32 drivers in the point standings following the race at Pocono Raceway and seeded them from No. 1 to No. 32. The following weekend's race on Naval Base Coronado was not factored into the equation, to avoid the focus from being on anything other than the venue's inaugural race itself.
3 drivers excluded from NASCAR tournament
As a result, Haas Factory Team's Cole Custer, Trackhouse Racing's Connor Zilisch, and Rick Ware Racing's Cody Ware were not among the 32 drivers included in the bracket.
Custer was tied with Hendrick Motorsports' Alex Bowman for the 32nd and final spot after the Pocono race. Bowman missed four races earlier this season due to vertigo, so he likely would have been several positions higher anyway, but he won the tiebreaker since his top finishes, two third place finishes at Talladega Superspeedway and Texas Motor Speedway, are better than Custer's season-best result of 12th at Michigan International Speedway.
Zilisch was 26 points behind Bowman for 32nd, while Ware was 50 points behind.
The other driver who competed at Sonoma but was not eligible for the tournament was Richard Childress Racing's Austin Hill. Hill is set to run the rest of the year behind the wheel of the No. 8-turned-No. 33 Chevrolet, which he has driven since the death of two-time series champion Kyle Busch in May.
The 32-driver bracket was based on driver standings, not owner standings, and Hill is also not eligible for Cup Series points since he's a full-time O'Reilly Auto Parts Series driver. Additionally, Busch was recently removed from the standings by NASCAR, meaning that there are officially only 35 full-time drivers.
The No.8/No. 33 team is currently 29th in the owner standings.
No non-chartered (open) cars were entered at Sonoma.
Zilisch led the non-tournament drivers with a career-best seventh place finish, while Custer was 20th and Ware was 33rd. Hill finished 34th.
Round two of the NASCAR In-Season Challenge is scheduled to take place this Sunday, July 5 at Chicagoland Speedway, which hasn't hosted a Cup Series race since 2019. The eero 400 is set to be shown live on TNT beginning at 6:00 p.m. ET.
