Denny Hamlin’s Sonoma weekend has picked up an extra edge before the Cup Series even rolls off pit road.
The second NASCAR In-Season Challenge opens on Sunday at Sonoma Raceway, and the No. 2 seed has been handed a first-round draw against Ty Dillon, last year’s surprise finalist in the bracket format.
NASCAR confirmed the full 32-driver seed list after Pocono, with Tyler Reddick leading the bracket, Hamlin seeded second and Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott and Ty Gibbs completing the top five. The opening round will run alongside the Toyota/Save Mart 350, with the head-to-head results decided by whichever driver in each pairing finishes higher in the race.
Hamlin gets an awkward first-round test
On paper, Hamlin’s route starts exactly where a title-level driver would want it: high seed, proven form, and a clean statistical advantage over a lower-ranked opponent. Sonoma rarely honours that kind of neat logic.
Dillon is only the No. 31 seed, but his run to last year’s final made him one of the bracket’s defining names. That history matters because the format does not ask a driver to beat the whole field. It asks him to beat one car, on one afternoon, in a race where strategy, stage calls and traffic can drag a faster entry into trouble.
That is what makes Hamlin’s draw more interesting than the seed numbers suggest. A normal Sonoma top-10 run might be enough. A slightly mistimed caution, a slow stop or one off-sequence strategy call could make the bracket feel much tighter than the championship table does.
It also lands at a moment when Hamlin’s wider Cup picture is already being sharpened by the 23XI Racing fight around him. Tyler Reddick’s own Sonoma bracket start now comes with added weight after San Diego, while Ryan Preece’s Sonoma chance has become part of the same road-course reset.
Sonoma gives the bracket real bite
The first round is not short on trapdoors. Reddick opens against Alex Bowman, Blaney faces Josh Berry, Chase Elliott meets Noah Gragson, and Shane van Gisbergen is paired with Preece in one of the most eye-catching road-course contests on the board.
Van Gisbergen’s draw is especially sharp because Sonoma arrives immediately after his San Diego race unravelled in traffic. His immediate Sonoma reset now carries more than defending-winner pressure; it also carries a knockout condition against a driver whose San Diego points haul gave RFK Racing fresh momentum.
Bubba Wallace against Michael McDowell is another pairing with genuine road-course danger. Wallace has shown enough recovery speed to make Sunday more than a survival exercise, but McDowell remains exactly the kind of opponent who can turn a bracket opener into a long afternoon.
The challenge then moves through Chicagoland, EchoPark Speedway and North Wilkesboro before the final at Indianapolis on July 26. That gives Sonoma the job of stripping the field from 32 to 16 before the tournament has had any time to settle.
For Hamlin, that means Sunday is not just another chance to bank points after a strong summer spell. It is the first check on whether the bracket can turn a front-running seed into a vulnerable one before the format has even left California.
NASCAR’s official bracket lists Hamlin against Dillon in the first round, with the full Sonoma matchup board also setting up Reddick-Bowman, Wallace-McDowell and van Gisbergen-Preece as early pressure points.
