The NASCAR Cup Series playoff races at Kansas Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway marked the first set of back-to-back races to feature exclusively the 36 full-time chartered cars, with no non-chartered (open) entries, since June 2024.
This weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, however, there are three open cars set to compete in the Bank of America 400.
All three are locked into this 267-lap race around the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) Concord, North Carolina oval, which is set to be the first playoff race at the Charlotte oval since 2017. From 2018 to 2025, the race was contested on the track's interior Roval layout.
3 open cars to compete at Charlotte
The most straightforward change this weekend is the addition of Corey Heim and the No. 67 23XI Racing Toyota. This race is Heim's 11th of 12 scheduled starts this year. He has already won twice as he prepares to make the full-time move to the team's No. 35 Toyota as Riley Herbst's replacement next year.
The other two changes are both intriguing. NY Racing Team have added the No. 44 Chevrolet for the seventh time this season and first time since Joey Gase competed in the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway in late August. But it's B.J. McLeod, who owns Live Fast Motorsports, who is set to run his first ever race for the team.
McLeod has run three races this season, all with his own team, although he did run two races for Garage 66 two years ago, despite also running five races for Live Fast Motorsports. He ran five races for his own team a year ago and none for anybody else, and prior to 2024, he hadn't run any races for a team other than his own since 2020, which is before Live Fast Motorsports even existed.
Speaking of Garage 66, they have added the No. 66 Ford for the 15th time this year, and it marks the second time the entry has been fielded for Gray Gaulding. But the first time around at Daytona, Gaulding failed to qualify for what would have been his first Cup Series start since June 2023.
So instead of ending a 118-race absence, he is set to end a 124-race absence this weekend at Charlotte, where he most recently competed at the Cup level in 2020.
Sunday's Bank of America 400 is set to be shown live on USA Network from Charlotte Motor Speedway beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET, although don't rule out the possibility of inclement weather from Isaias forcing more schedule changes after several were already made for Saturday. Don't miss any of the action from the sixth race on the 10-race 2026 NASCAR Cup Series postseason schedule!
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