The first-ever NASCAR in-season tournament got started on Saturday night with the Quaker State 400 Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and chaos unfolded pretty much as soon as the green flag flew.
There has been predictable criticism regarding the in-season tournament itself, with many fans referring to it as yet another gimmick that nobody asked for.
That said, the five tournament races are still standard regular season races; you can ignore the tournament, for what it's worth, and it would have no impact on the actual season championship, so it's not nearly as much of a "gimmick" as many fans believe stage racing and the playoffs are.
Still, NASCAR's decision to run three seeding races at Michigan International Speedway, Autodromo Hermanos Rodrigez, and Pocono Raceway, only to open the five-round challenge with a superspeedway race, had fans talking.
It's almost like the seeding process became entirely meaningless, and the matchups should have instead been determined by a roulette wheel.
NASCAR's No. 1 seed is already out (after a few laps)
Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin earned the top seed with his Michigan win (and his Pocono runner-up finish as the tiebreaker).
All he had to do was beat Kaulig Racing's Ty Dillon, who has competed for five different Cup Series teams since his most recent top 10 finish in 2022.
So of course he couldn't do it.
At a "wild card" track such as Atlanta, even the No. 1 vs. No. 32 matchup might as well have been considered a "pick'em". There was no inherent benefit to earning a high seed, and that was even more evident by the randomness of superspeedway racing that NASCAR fans have all come to expect.
Even a second place finish would not have been enough to advance if you happened to be matched up against the race winner, even if the race winner was a low seed.
Sure enough, Hamlin crashed out early in a multi-car pileup, while Dillon simply stayed out of any significant trouble and finished in eighth place, his best result since October 2020. Dillon has historically run better in superspeedway races than any other races, and he took advantage of the round of 32 being contested in one.
Hamlin wasn't the only highly seeded driver to be eliminated. Three of the top four were knocked out, all due to wrecks. In fact, the other two of the top four who were knocked out also belong to Joe Gibbs Racing, those being Chase Briscoe and Christopher Bell.
The highest seeded driver who advanced was No. 3 seed Chris Buescher of RFK Racing, who finished in ninth place. Hendrick Motorsports' Chase Elliott, the No. 5 seed, won the race and advanced to the round of 16.
All in all, eight of the 16 matchups were won by the lower seed. Three drivers who finished outside of the top 20 advanced did so despite the fact that they finished behind multiple top 20 finishers who did not advance, simply because of the matchup draws.
The second round of the tournament is scheduled to take place this Sunday, July 6 at the Chicago Street Course. The Grant Park 165 is set to be shown live on TNT Sports beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET.