NASCAR's latest and greatest gimmick, a slew of head-to-head matchups known as the In-Season Challenge over the past five weeks, came to an end at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Sunday's Brickyard 400.
Given the volatility of one-race rounds and all drivers battling different opponents, plus the fact that the tournament started with a superspeedway race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a street course race in Chicago, and a road course race in Sonoma Raceway, the championship battle at Indy was always likely to be, ironically, an unlikely matchup.
And that it was.
Two winless drivers named Ty, both of whom need to change that just to get into this year's playoffs, advanced to the championship round. Ty Gibbs actually had a solid string of races, averaging a seventh place result over the first four rounds. Ty Dillon, on the other hand, had just one top 15 finish and advanced simply because of his opponents' poor results.
On paper, at least based on past performance, Gibbs simply needed to avoid a disastrous Sunday at the Brickyard. And he did exactly that. All it took was a 21st place finish, seven spots ahead of Dillon in 28th, to claim the tournament championship.
Ty Gibbs wins NASCAR tournament
As for the drivers who actually won races during the tournament, they were never in contention. Shane van Gisbergen won twice; he wasn't even one of the 32 tournament qualifiers. Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott were out in round one and round two, respectively, and Sunday's Brickyard 400 winner, Bubba Wallace, also failed to advance to the quarterfinals.
In fact, Elliott was the only driver, in all five rounds, who actually advanced because of a win. Maybe NASCAR can have a second Championship 4 over the offseason featuring these four drivers. Let the gimmicks roll.
At the end of the day, you can't knock NASCAR for trying something new. Plus, these five races were still regular season races valued just as much as any of the other 21 regular season races in the grand scheme of the playoff picture. None of the tournament business actually affected the playoffs or the point standings in any negative way.
However, there was something ironic, embarrassing, comical, enjoyable, and basically everything else in between about Ty Gibbs standing there raising his 21st place trophy after winning $1,000,000 for finishing higher than 28th over a driver who has one top 10 finish in the last five years – and hoisting that trophy before he has ever raised a Cup Series race-winning trophy.
You do have to give Gibbs credit for his classy response in accepting the award, and his gesture of respect toward Dillon with the $10,000 donation in his name. None of this is a knock on him; as they say, don't hate the player; hate the game.
And this game was as goofy as goofy gets. I can only imagine who the "tournament" winner would have been back in Dale Earnhardt's prime.