Barring a situation in which there end up being more than 16 regular season race winners and Trackhouse Racing rookie Shane van Gisbergen is the lowest placed winner in the point standings, he punched his ticket to the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs by dominating Sunday afternoon's Viva Mexico 250, the first ever Cup race in Mexico at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
This 100-lap race around the 15-turn, 2.429-mile (3.909-kilometer) road course in Mexico City was the second of three seeding races ahead of the first ever five-race in-season tournament. The first took place one week prior at Michigan International Speedway, and the third is scheduled to take place this Sunday afternoon at Pocono Raceway.
The tournament is scheduled to begin two weekends from now at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Seeding for the tournament is simple. It is based on each driver's best finish during the three seeding races. The tiebreaker is second-best finish, the second tiebreaker is third-best finish, and the fourth tiebreaker, if all three results are the same, is season points.
Shane van Gisbergen eliminated, despite Mexico win
Van Gisbergen is one of three (at most) different winners of the seeding races. Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin won the race at Michigan, and a third different winner could emerge at the Tricky Triangle this Sunday afternoon.
On paper, this would secure the New Zealander a top three seed. But he is actually already eliminated due to one pre-tournament rule.
While his win may be good enough to effectively lock him into the playoffs, and thus a top 16 finish in the point standings, in his first season, he entered the three-race seeding stretch as one of four full-time drivers not eligible for the tournament.
Only the drivers inside the top 32 in the point standings leading into the first seeding race qualified for the five-round bracket.
Van Gisbergen, despite now being 30th, had been 33rd and was therefore never a factor in the seeding the process once the first seeding race began.
Hamlin, currently the No. 1 seed, is locked into either the No. 1 seed or the No. 2 seed.
Mexico City marked the second of three seeding races for the 2025 In-Season Tournament.
— NASCAR Insights (@NASCARInsights) June 16, 2025
Here are the updated seeding positions following Mexico City, with one race remaining: pic.twitter.com/urQ0xsSbQn
The other three full-time drivers ineligible for the tournament are Haas Factory Team's Cole Custer, 23XI Racing rookie Riley Herbst, and Rick Ware Racing's Cody Ware.
The tournament is set to feature head-to-head matchups in each of the five rounds, with the field being narrowed down from 32 to 16 to eight to four and then to two for the "championship" race, the Brickyard 400, at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in late July.
Yes, somebody could technically win the tournament with five straight 35th place DNFs.
This Sunday's race at Pocono, the Great American Getaway 400 presented by VISITPA, is the final race of the year set to be shown live on Amazon Prime Video, with live coverage set to begin at 2:00 p.m. ET. All five races of the tournament are set to be shown live on TNT Sports.