Saturday's NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Iowa Speedway was the penultimate race of the 2026 regular season, with the series set to have the next two weekends off while the Cup Series and Craftsman Truck Series are due to compete at Richmond Raceway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
The O'Reilly Series regular season finale is scheduled to take place at Daytona International Speedway on Friday, August 28.
The 2026 season is the first under NASCAR's new and much less strict rules regarding full-time Cup Series drivers running lower series races. Over the offseason, NASCAR increased the O'Reilly Series limit from five races to 10 for full-time Cup drivers with at least three seasons of Cup experience.
But despite the loosened restrictions, NASCAR still opted to prohibit full-time Cup drivers from running O'Reilly Series playoff races, and they still opted to prohibit said drivers from running the regular season finale.
As a result, there are no more races on this year's O'Reilly Series schedule which Cup drivers will be eligible to run.
NASCAR Cup drivers done in O'Reilly Series for 2026
The lone exception is Austin Hill, who took over behind the wheel of the No. 8-turned-No. 33 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing's Cup team after the passing of two-time champion Kyle Busch in May. Hill, who has competed in every Cup race since, remains a full-time O'Reilly Series driver who is not eligible for Cup Series points.
A total of 12 full-time Cup drivers, excluding Hill, competed in at least one O'Reilly Series race this year, although three of them were technically not bound by the 10-race limit, since they have not yet run three full seasons at the Cup level. Only one of those 12 drivers actually ran 10 races, that being Ross Chastain.
Chastain ran four races for Jordan Anderson Racing and five for JR Motorsports, winning at Charlotte Motor Speedway for the latter for his first series victory since 2019. He also ran one race for DGM Racing with Jesse Iwuji Motorsports.
He was the only full-time Cup driver who competed at Iowa, placing fourth for JR Motorsports after placing third in the previous race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in what was the first ever top four sweep for a team in series history. Chase Elliott also played a part in that sweep with his fourth place finish, while full-time O'Reilly Series drivers Carson Kvapil and Justin Allgaier ran 1-2.
Seven total O'Reilly Series races were won by full-time Cup drivers this year. Kyle Larson won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway, Shane van Gisbergen won at Circuit of the Americas and Sonoma Raceway, and Connor Zilisch won at Bristol Motor Speedway and Watkins Glen International.
Full-time Cup drivers will still be eligible to run this coming weekend's Truck Series race at Richmond, since it is not the regular season finale. Van Gisbergen is set to drive for Spire Motorsports, and Christopher Bell is set to drive for Halmar Friesen Racing.
The O'Reilly Series regular season finale is the Winn-Dixie 250, which is set to be shown live on the CW Network from Daytona International Speedway beginning at 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, August 28. Take advantage of FuboTV's free trial offer and catch all of the action!
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