Here is a rundown of what got me thinking...
Scott Dixon won a bad IndyCar race in Detroit. Joe Roberts won the Moto2 race from Mugello, the American's second career victory. NASCAR is taking its time ruling on Kyle Larson. Stewart-Haas Racing announced it will be closing shop at the conclusion of 2024. Team Penske benefitted from a Team Penske mistake, and it didn't involve data manipulation. Esteban Ocon could be benched for Montreal. The Germans are reporting Dale Coyne Racing has contacted Mick Schumacher for his services. Formula E could see Ferrari join its grid. MotoGP confirmed India will not take place in 2024, but Kazakhstan will slide into that weekend in September. However, there was news last month that did not get the attention it deserved from this space because of Indianapolis. Now that it is June, here we are...
Our Head-to-Head Reality
Last month, NASCAR announced it would add a tournament element to its 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season. Over five races during the summer, a 32-driver tournament would take place with drivers paired into head-to-head matchups with the winners advancing to the next round. At the end of the tournament, two drivers will face off for a $1 million prize.
These five races will all be broadcasted during the TNT portion of the season. The prior three races during Amazon's Prime portion of the Cup season will be used as seeding rounds to determine how the bracket will lineup for the first race. The tournament will begin on Saturday June 28, 2025 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
As a space that has been openly tracking a hypothetical head-to-head season that ends in a playoff for IndyCar since 2019, this is a welcome element to a motorsports season and I am glad NASCAR is attempting it. Though, Denny Hamlin deserves much credit because he ran his own tournament last year, and year two of Denny Hamlin's tournament challenge began this weekend with Gateway.
There has been plenty of dismissal at NASCAR introducing this tournament for the 2025 season, but this is a positive. It only adds an element to a race without completely changing a race. We aren't adding more stages. We aren't doing heat races. We aren't inverting the field mid-race. We are taking the existing race and giving something different to watch while it is going on. It is only an addition.
It doesn't make winning the race any less meaningful. If you win the race you will likely have won your head-to-head matchup and advanced to the next round. A race result will still be important, but it does give a viewer something else to watch and could give the battle for 12th greater meaning or two drivers running seventh and tenth could become intriguing if one driver loses a spot and the other gains a spot.
When I started tracking the hypothetical IndyCar league in 2019, I did it because I believed the one way motorsports could standout in the new world of legalized sports betting was with head-to-head matchups. It is tough to pick a race winner, and you are more likely to lose money, but if a race could turn into 12 bets of head-to-head matchups, a bettor could win and win big. A bettor could decide to bet only four or five matchups. Someone could try all 12. It was a way to get people involved watching a race without feeling like it is a foolish bet to pick one driver out of two-dozen or three-dozen.
At the time, I argued head-to-head matchups were something the series should be forward on and organize on its own, providing them for sports books and casinos rather than having the sports book or casinos make them up. If the series, IndyCar in this case, took the initiative, then gambling sites could run with it without having to do any heavy lifting. If it could be a new way to draw viewers and have them interested in the series without costing the series an arm and a leg, it was an obvious thing to do.
Obviously, IndyCar hasn't done it. I doubt it ever will, but until NASCAR announced its in-season tournament last month, no one had done anything of this like for five years. The opportunity was there. Instead of being first, IndyCar will only get to look like a copycat if it ever adopts it. But we aren't hear to admonish IndyCar again for failing to take a chance on something that wouldn't cost the series anything, we are here to praise to NASCAR because it is doing something different to engage viewers during an otherwise dull portion of the season.
It was intelligent to tie it to the TNT package. This will be TNT's thing. It is something TNT can push at the start and be tracked through its five-race run of the Cup season. It is a midseason shakeup before the playoffs start. NASCAR has a great opening two months, but then it falls off. It doesn't pick up in the summer, and really doesn't see more viewers during the playoffs either. This tournament will be a reason to stay engaged through the dog days of summer before that final playoff push begins.
Track selection will be interesting, and starting at Atlanta signals what NASCAR hopes from this tournament experience. One, it is in TNT's backyard, so it makes sense to strt there. Two, NASCAR wants upsets. It wants the first race to be wide-open where anyone can advance and anyone can be eliminated. It knows how to root for chaos. However, be careful of what you wish for.
When it comes to the NCAA basketball tournaments in March, the belief is the first weekend is for upsets, but the second weekend is for chalk.
We love upsets. We love seeing Florida Gulf Coast bounce Georgetown or St. Peter's knock off a two-seed. But viewership is clear, if there are too many upsets, fewer people tune in. When it is Kentucky-Duke or North Carolina-Kansas, people watch. We like seeing the occasional upset, and a bottom seed win a game or two, but more people don't watch if there are nothing but Cinderellas left standing. When it gets to the Sweet Sixteen and the Elite Eight, we want blue bloods, the programs that have been dominant for decades and we are used to seeing in the Final Four.
Atlanta, in its current configuration, opens the door for an abundance of upsets. It could be fun for one race, but then you need to take your medicine in race two. If six of the top eight drivers in the championship are eliminated at Atlanta and you are left with six of the bottom eight, meaning six of the drivers between 25th and 32nd, this tournament could be in bad shape quickly.
It runs the risk of making it easy for the few top drivers left remaining. It could be a cakewalk to the final because not every race will be Atlanta. Even if it is in a tournament format, if you have Harrison Burton vs. Ryan Preece in a second round matchup at say Pocono, it is still a battle 22nd. Sure, it matters, but it also isn't that thrilling.
Looking at the 2024 schedule and when this tournament would take place, those races are currently Nashville, Chicago, Pocono, Indianapolis and Richmond. We know Atlanta will be replacing one of those races, but there are going to be at least two if not three straight-forward races where there will not be a gimmick to save an otherwise slow team.
The opening weekend looks great if you have William Byron vs. Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., but if you have that matchup in the quarterfinal round at Pocono or semifinal round at Indianapolis, it could be rather anti-climatic. Where will the final held? Richmond at the present moment isn't the hot location to end this competition at. Indianapolis makes sense on paper for the prestige of the venue, but is Roger Penske really going to want the Brickyard 400 on cable?
It is a dangerous thing when the final is one head-to-heat matchup, especially if it is going to be at a track where it requires having a good car.
I have been doing IndyCar's hypothetical league format for five years. In the first year, it was Josef Newgarden vs. Ed Jones in the final at Laguna Seca. Newgarden started second to Jones' 18th and Jones retired after 51 laps. We would have been lucky in 2020 because the final would have been Newgarden vs. Scott Dixon, which happened to be the top two drivers in the championship that season in the St. Petersburg season finale.
In 2021, it was Newgarden vs. Patricio O'Ward, a great matchup on paper, but O'Ward was knocked out early at Long Beach due to a mechanical issue. It was better in 2022 with Will Power vs. Scott McLaughlin in the final at Laguna Seca. Power took the title with third over McLaughlin in sixth. Last year's final would have been somewhat dramatic between Dixon and O'Ward.
The final must be held somewhere, and at some point you just accept what you get. Not every round will be fantastic. You cannot assure the final will be competitive. If one team has an off day or gets caught in an early accident, it deflates the balloon, but this is where we remember the head-to-head matchup is extra. The race will still matter most. If there is a great battle for the race victory and the tournament champion finished eighth while the other finalist retired with 100 laps remaining, we will focus on the battle for the race victory and tournament becomes a foot note. If the race is a runaway but the head-to-head championship is between two drivers running 11th and 12th, we will get this other battle to watch but the race victory is still more important in the grand scheme of the championship...
Until NASCAR decides to give out playoff points for how drivers do in the tournament. That's the next thing that will happen. NASCAR will give something. I don't know. A playoff point for each round victory with an additional ten playoff points to the tournament champion with five additional playoff points to the other finalist. But we will let NASCAR break that news in January at its media day.
Seeing as how this is being introduced in the first year of a seven-year television contract and it is tied to one of the broadcast partners, let's give this a few years to see how NASCAR's tournament plays out. It is a low-risk way to giving people something else to watch during a race. If it doesn't stick, it will hurt no one. If it hits, it will look genius.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Scott Dixon and Joe Roberts, but did you know...
Francesco Bagnaia won MotoGP's Italian Grand Prix and the sprint race. David Alonso won the Moto3 race, his third consecutive victory and his fifth of the season. Mattia Casadei and Kevin Zannoni split the MotoE races.
Austin Cindric won the NASCAR Cup race from Gateway after Ryan Blaney ran out of fuel coming to the white flag. It is Cindric's second career victory. Shane van Gisbergen won the Grand National Series race from Portland, his first career victory in the series. Corey Heim won the Truck race from Gateway, his fourth victory of the season.
The #10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura of Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque won the IMSA race from Detroit. The #77 AO Racing Porsche of Laurin Heinrich and Seb Priaulx won in GTD Pro, its second consecutive victory.
Louis Foster won the Indy Lights race from Detroit, his second consecutive victory.
The #16 Scherer Sport PHX Audi of Ricardo Feller, Dennis Marschall, Christopher Mies and Frank Stippler won a weather-shortened 24 Hours Nürburgring.
The #37 TGR Team Deloitte TOM's Toyota of Ukyo Sasahara and Giuliano Alesi won the Super GT race from Suzuka. The #777 D'Station Racing Aston Martin of Tomonobu Fuji and Charlie Fagg won in GT300.
Ott Tänak won Rally d'Italia Sardegna by 0.2 seconds over Sébastien Ogier after entering the final four stages 17.1 seconds behind the Frenchman.
Coming Up This Weekend
It will be a busy day in North America with IndyCar at Road America, Formula One in Montreal and NASCAR at Sonoma and all three races will be shown on network television and practically all happening simultaneously.
The Le Mans Test Day will take place and the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters is accommodating its weekend at Zandvoort to allow some drivers to attend both.
