NASCAR Cup Series: In-Season Challenge Round of 8 preview at Sonoma

It's getting down to crunch time in the inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge, with the Round of 8 being held this weekend at Sonoma.

Only two of the top ten pre-tournament seeds remain in the bracket, with the highest ranked being Ty Gibbs, who will be taking on Zane Smith in the only matchup between two drivers from the top half of the seeding pool.

The prohibitive favorite to win Sunday's race outright is Shane van Gisbergen, but that doesn't matter one bit for the bracket's purposes – he's on the outside looking in. On the inside though? 32nd seed Ty Dillon. Isn't that fun?

Anyway, how did we get here, and what can we expect? And why isn't this month's dominant driver still in the hunt for $1 million?

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In-Season Challenge matchups in detail

Well, just like any of the big single-elimination brackets in sports, some people failed to make the cut. In order to get a nice, orderly 32 drivers in the tournament, the bottom four full-time Cup Series drivers on points when the seeding races started (June 8th at Michigan) were dropped.

Van Gisbergen at that point in time? 33rd. Ouch. If he'd just been able to sneak into that 32nd spot...well, it's hard to speculate on the unknowns, but he'd have secured a top-three seed with his Mexico City win, and very possibly done enough at Atlanta (24th) to make it through to Chicago – where he won again.

Enough about the could-have-beens though. What we have now is a set of four shootouts. For the purposes of brevity, we're going to just put the drivers' seedings in parentheses after their names.

Ty Dillon (32) will face off against Alex Bowman (8) after seeing off Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski. Or, rather, after wrecks saw off that pair, seeing as neither were even close to finishing those races.

John Hunter Nemechek (12) and Erik Jones (20) will battle to face the winner of Dillon and Bowman, with the pair's Legacy Motor Club social media team having a lot of fun this week playing up the internal team battle.

The other half of the bracket, no matter what the seedings tell you, is undeniably tougher. Tyler Reddick (23) has been one of the sport's best drivers all year and seems locked into the playoffs on points, while opponent Ryan Preece (15) is just two points under the cut line for the postseason.

Top remaining seed Ty Gibbs (6) will face Zane Smith (14) to round out the bracket, with both men upping their game since the start of the tournament. Gibbs' second place finish in Chicago last weekend tells the story of his favored status in this matchup.

Gibbs, Reddick and Bowman are all -250 or better with various sportsbooks to progress in their matchups, with Nemechek at around -135. Those odds seem a little ungenerous considering how chaotic the bracket has been up to this point, but hey. We don't set them, we just tell you about them.

NASCAR Cup Series: Sonoma start times and schedule

The 110-lap race starts on Sunday, July 13, 2025, at 3:30 pm (ET). Here's the full NASCAR Cup Series schedule for the weekend converted to your time zone.

NASCAR Cup Series: Sonoma TV schedule

In the United States, NASCAR Cup Series coverage this weekend is split across many different broadcasters and platforms.

In terms of television coverage, all of this weekend's action will be live on TNT Sports, with Saturday's running being shown on truTV.

Elsewhere, radio coverage of practice, qualifying and Sunday's race will be available on SiriusXM and PRN.

During Sunday's race, in-car camera footage will also be available on MAX.

Outside the United States, the broadcaster of this weekend's event depends on your location. Here's a breakdown of how to catch the action in some major countries around the world.

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