In 2025, NASCAR introduced a five-week In-Season Challenge, featuring 32 drivers set up in a bracket-style format with head-to-head matchups each race before ultimately crowning a "champion".
The rules for that event have changed this year.
In 2025, the top 32 drivers in the point standings following the race at Nashville Superspeedway were locked into the tournament. The seeding was then determined by each driver's best finish (tiebreaker being second best finish, then third best finish) over the next three races at Michigan International Speedway, Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, and Pocono Raceway.
The tournament then began at Atlanta Motor Speedway and also included the races at the Chicago Street Course, Sonoma Raceway, Dover Motor Speedway, and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
This time around, seeding is set to be based strictly on the point standings.
The top 32 drivers in the standings following the season's 16th points race at Pocono Raceway on Sunday, June 14 are set to be locked into their seeds according to their position in the standings.
The following weekend's race at the new Coronado Street Course will not have any impact on tournament seeding. The tournament is then set to begin one weekend later at Sonoma Raceway.
Additional In-Season Challenge tracks are set to include Chicagoland Speedway, EchoPark (Atlanta) Speedway, North Wilkesboro Speedway, and Indianapolis Motor Speedway. All tournament races are once again set to be shown live on TNT Sports.
The 2025 championship came down to Ty Dillon and Ty Gibbs, two drivers who still have a combined zero Cup Series victories to their name. Gibbs was crowned champion with a 21st place finish at Indy, and neither driver made the playoffs.
Dillon's Cinderella run came despite the fact that he posted just one finish higher than 17th throughout the entire tournament, illustrating just how "random" and volatile things can (and generally do) get when you start talking about having head-to-head driver matchups, especially at tracks that lend themselves to chaos.
At the end of the day, the In-Season Challenge doesn't actually affect the championship (aside from the obvious points implications from each race), but it definitely remains one of the more gimmicky recent additions to the sport.
At least this year, tournament seeding is actually based on more than a three-race sample size, and the tournament won't begin on a superspeedway, which effectively rendered seeding meaningless a year ago.