{"id":54733,"date":"2025-07-10T18:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T18:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/54733\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T18:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T18:05:13","slug":"third-round-matchups-in-nascar-cup-in-season-challenge-at-sonoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/54733\/","title":{"rendered":"Third-round matchups in NASCAR Cup In-Season Challenge at Sonoma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The upsets continued in the second round of NASCAR\u2019s In-Season Challenge, leaving eight drivers in contention for the $1 million prize.<\/p>\n<p>Ty Dillon, the No. 32 seed in the 32-driver event continued his run. After eliminating top seed Denny Hamlin at Atlanta, Dillon beat No. 17 seed Brad Keselowski last weekend at Chicago to move on to the third round.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday\u2019s race at Sonoma Raceway will cut the field In-Season Challenge field to four drivers. <\/p>\n<p>Here is a look, with the help of Racing Insights, at the second-round pairings for Sunday\u2019s race:<\/p>\n<p><b>No. 6 Ty Gibbs vs. No. 14 Zane Smith<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>How they got here<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Gibbs eliminated Justin Haley (seeded 27th) at Atlanta and AJ Allmendinger (22) at Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Smith eliminated Austin Cindric (19) at Atlanta and Chris Buescher (3) at Chicago.<\/p>\n<p><b>Follow the road: <\/b>Gibbs has an average finish of 15.7 in three road course races this season, while Smith\u2019s average finish is 26.0.<\/p>\n<p><b>Rolling: <\/b>Gibbs has five consecutive top-15 finishes, including two top-five results. <\/p>\n<p><b>Winner &#8230; <\/b>advances to meet winner of Ryan Preece &#8211; Tyler Reddick matchup.<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"AnchorLink\" id=\"image-830000\"\/><\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"No 6 Gibbs vs No 14 Smith.jpg\"  width=\"708\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1752170710_288_\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>    <b>No. 8 Alex Bowman vs. No. 32 Ty Dillon<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>How they got here<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Bowman eliminated Joey Logano (25) at Atlanta and Bubba Wallace (9) at Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Dillon eliminated Denny Hamlin (1) at Atlanta and Brad Keselowski (17) at Chicago.<\/p>\n<p><b>Matchup of opposites:<\/b> Bowman is one of two drivers to finish in the top 10 in all three road course races this season (Shane van Gisbergen is the other). Dillon has not finished better than 20th in the three road course races this year. Bowman has seven top-10 finishes, including a win in his last 11 races on road courses. Dillon has never finished better than 15th in 28 Cup road course starts.<\/p>\n<p><b>Upset Special: <\/b>The driver with the worse seed has won 11 of the 24 matchups so far, including Dillon\u2019s two wins.<\/p>\n<p><b>Winner &#8230; <\/b>advances to meet winner of John Hunter Nemechek &#8211; Erik Jones matchup.<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"AnchorLink\" id=\"image-0a0000\"\/><\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"No 8 Bowman vs No 32 Ty Dillon.jpg\"  width=\"700\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1752170711_812_\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>    No. 12 John Hunter Nemechek vs. No. 20 Erik Jones<\/p>\n<p><b>How they got here<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Nemechek eliminated Josh Berry (21) at Atlanta and Chase Elliott (5) at Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Jones eliminated Ross Chastain (13) at Atlanta and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (29) at Chicago.<\/p>\n<p><b>Familiar faces: <\/b>This matchup pits Legacy Motor Club teammates against each other. At least the organization knows it will have one driver among the final four in the race for $1 million.<\/p>\n<p><b>Close duel: <\/b>In the last eight races, Nemechek and Jones have each finished better than the other four times.<\/p>\n<p><b>Winner &#8230; <\/b>advances to meet winner of Ty Dillon &#8211; Alex Bowman matchup.<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"AnchorLink\" id=\"image-2a0000\"\/><\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"No 12 JHN vs No 20 Jones.jpg\"  width=\"697\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1752170712_464_\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>    No. 15 Ryan Preece vs. No. 23 Tyler Reddick<\/p>\n<p><b>How they got here<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Preece eliminated William Byron (18) at Atlanta and Noah Gragson (31) at Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Reddick eliminated Kyle Larson (10) at Atlanta and Carson Hocevar (26) at Chicago.<\/p>\n<p><b>Road course ringer: <\/b>In the Next Gen era, Reddick is tied for the most road course wins (three) and poles (three) and ranks second in top-five finishes (nine) and top-10 finishes (14).<\/p>\n<p><b>On a roll: <\/b>Preece has five top-10 finishes in the last eight races. That is tied for the most top 10s in that span.<\/p>\n<p><b>Winner &#8230; <\/b>advances to meet winner of Ty Gibbs &#8211; Zane Smith matchup.<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"AnchorLink\" id=\"image-180000\"\/><\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"No 15 Preece vs No 23 Reddick.jpg\"  width=\"696\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1752170713_681_\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The upsets continued in the second round of NASCAR\u2019s In-Season Challenge, leaving eight drivers in contention for the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":54734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-54733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114830267145028735","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}