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The NASCAR In-Season Challenge comes to an end today with the race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Just a few weeks ago, I told you that NASCAR did a very poor job of hyping up this challenge to gain new eyeballs on the sport. The challenge did not play out as NASCAR would have hoped since the lowest seeded driver is in the final and racing for one million dollars.
Ty Gibbs, the six seed, and Ty Dillon, the thirty-second seed, are battling it out for one million dollars in the midst of a full field at the Brickyard. NASCAR most certainly would have rather had a couple of its biggest stars battling it out for the win. Take your pick, Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Chase Elliot, William Byron or Kyle Larson. Instead, NASCAR ends up with the battle of the Ty’s, which neither of these two guys have ever even won a race at the Cup level. In addition to NASCAR doing a poor job of promoting the challenge, NASCAR made it seem like the one million dollars would be going directly to the drivers. However, NASCAR has come out saying that the drivers are not the ones getting the million dollars. It will be distributed to the team owner where they can then decide how much the driver gets per their contract.
The final stage is underway with Ty Gibbs running 19th, while Ty Dillon runs 29th and is one lap down. It seems as though Ty Gibbs should wrap up the in-season challenge pretty easily from here, but only these last fifty-five laps will tell. There is a lot of differing fuel strategies taking place, so there is going to be some drama to determine the race winner and possibly the in-season challenge winner as well. Joey Logano blew a tire while leading gifting the lead to Bubba Wallace. Bubba Wallace was trying to make it on fuel, but we have a caution for rain in Turn 1. Overtime restart has a wreck with Zane Smith, Tyler Reddick, and Joey Logano and this will put Bubba Wallace’s chances to win in jeopardy as he is almost out of fuel. Bubba does in fact make it on fuel and wins the race to put him into the playoffs. Ty Gibbs is the inaugural In-Season challenge winner, and hopefully NASCAR promotes it better next season.
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