NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. – Of all the storylines heading into the NASCAR All-Star Race at the historic North Wilkesboro Speedway, one of its biggest was a storyline that won’t even be relevant until mid-2025.
On Monday (May 13), NASCAR, TNT Sports and Amazon Prime Video introduced an in-season tournament that will begin once TNT and Amazon join the NASCAR media world in 2025.
The general gist is that 32 drivers, using an undetermined format for seeding in the last three races of Amazon’s five-race schedule, will compete in a bracket-style tournament over the five races of TNT’s season, with the winner receiving $1 million.
When the tournament was announced, it was met with generally favorable reactions. Drivers echoed those sentiments just before All-Star practice at North Wilkesboro on Friday (May 17).
“More stuff like that is better for the sport in general,” said Alex Bowman.
“I think it’s gonna be a great addition to the sport,” added Christopher Bell. “It’s certainly gonna open up the strategy a lot, because it really creates a head-to-head racing scenario, where you know, if the yellow flag comes out, you might just do the opposite of the guy that you’re racing, regardless of what that does to your finishing position.
“So I think it’s gonna be awesome for the sport and it’s gonna be really fun to pay attention and see how it influences the racing.”
William Byron has optimism for the tournament, having won a similar bracket challenge in 2023 that was created by Denny Hamlin for fun.
“I was one year too early on that,” Byron said with a chuckle. “So I hope I didn’t push my luck too far on that and we can have a good tournament next year.”
Hamlin himself said, “It certainly has got all positives. I don’t think of anything negative that can go along with it. Certainly you’re gonna have some storylines. We know that this thing is gonna come down to someone, at the very end of the race, battling for an irrelevant position – what we think is an irrelevant position – but it will move someone on.
“There’s some people from the outside that will hopefully get some interest because they get to fill out a bracket, and certainly there will be some contest out there that is gonna reward them for having the best bracket.”
The $1 million prize was a big focal point for some of the drivers. Ross Chastain noted that his experience with the Craftsman Truck Series’…
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