NASCAR’s In-Season Challenge has been cut in half, and Chicagoland Speedway now gets something sharper than a standard comeback race.
The official Round 1 update from NASCAR.com confirmed that 16 drivers remain in contention for the $1m prize after Sonoma, where Shane van Gisbergen beat Ryan Preece while completing a weekend sweep for Trackhouse Racing.
Van Gisbergen led 74 of the 110 Cup laps at Sonoma and held off Chase Briscoe, a result already examined on ReadMotorSport after Briscoe’s late road-course push.
Chicagoland now carries the pressure
The second round will be staged at Chicagoland Speedway, which returns to the Cup Series schedule for the first time since 2019. NASCAR’s entry list also confirms a 39-car field for Sunday’s eero 400.
The headline matchup is internal: Kyle Larson against William Byron in a Hendrick Motorsports duel on an intermediate track. Alex Bowman, the most recent Cup winner at Chicagoland, also remains alive after knocking out top seed Tyler Reddick.
That gives Sunday’s race a rare double edge: a returning 1.5-mile venue and a bracket format that can punish even front-running teams before the regular-season run-in fully settles.
For van Gisbergen, the reset is also a test of whether a road-course surge can be converted into oval survival. For Hendrick, Larson versus Byron guarantees one major internal loss before the bracket reaches its final four.
