The bracket for NASCAR's first ever in-season tournament, officially dubbed "NASCAR's In-Season Challenge", may not officially be set, but the 32-driver field is.
Over the next three weekends at Michigan International Speedway, Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, and Pocono Raceway, 32 drivers are set to battle for seeding for the five-round tournament, which is scheduled to begin with the race at Atlanta Motor Speedway (we're still calling it that) on Saturday, June 28.
But four full-time drivers, who were also theoretically eligible to compete in this Challenge, are already eliminated, as only the drivers who left this past Sunday night's race at Nashville Superspeedway in the top 32 in the point standings have qualified for the tournament.
4 drivers already eliminated from NASCAR tournament
The four full-time drivers who find themselves from 33rd through 36th place in the point standings are Trackhouse Racing's Shane van Gisbergen, Haas Factory Team's Cole Custer, 23XI Racing's Riley Herbst, and Rick Ware Racing's Cody Ware.
The bracket is set to be seeded based on the results of the Michigan, Mexico, and Pocono races. Each driver's best finish is set to be used to determine their seed, with the first tiebreaker being the next best finish and the second tiebreaker being the worst finish. Should another tiebreaker be needed, the point standings will be used.
These results are set to determine the first round matchups at Atlanta, and the 16 matchup winners are slated to advance to the second round at the Chicago Street Course.
The eight winners of those matchups are set to advance to the quarterfinals at Sonoma Raceway. Four drivers are then set to advance to the semifinals at Dover Motor Speedway, and two are set to advance to the final round at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
With these rounds being purely head-to-head matchup based, it is technically possible for a driver to reel off nothing but 35th place finishes from now until the Brickyard 400 and win the whole tournament.
While the three seeding races are set to be shown live on Amazon Prime Video, the five tournament races are set to be shown live on TNT Sports. The broadcast booths for Amazon Prime Video and TNT Sports are the same, with Adam Alexander as the lead announcer and Steve Letarte and Dale Earnhardt Jr. as color commentators.
After the tournament, NBC is set to take over for the remainder of the 2025 season.
Tune in to Amazon Prime Video this Sunday, June 8 at 2:00 p.m. ET for the live broadcast of the first seeding race, the FireKeepers Casino 400, from Michigan International Speedway. The winner is locked into a top three seed.