$1 million In-Season Challenge prize sets up the Brickyard 400 for split-screen racing
INDIANAPOLIS AP Brickyard viewers will be tuning into pure split-screen racing Sunday On one side they ll monitor whether Kyle Larson can defend his Brickyard title or if Denny Hamlin can charge from the back of the field to become the fifth driver to complete a career sweep of the Cup s four crown jewel races On the other side they ll see whether Ty Gibbs or Ty Dillon or collects the million prize that goes to the first In-Season Challenge champion And fittingly this March Madness-like tournament concludes on one of the sport s grand stages Indianapolis Motor Speedway s historic -mile oval It s a made-for-television moment This is going to be a special moment no matter what happens Dillon explained before qualifying started Saturday I do ultimately want to win in the Cup series and I hope winning feels as great as these five weeks have I don t know how to compare it because it s the first time anybody has really gone through this round by round The concept comes straight out of Indiana s other favorite sport basketball Series personnel requested a response for the series midsummer blues and chose a combination of the NBA s In-Season Tournament and college basketball s single-elimination NCAA Tournament Race results at Michigan Mexico City and Pocono set up a -driver field Head-to-head results in Chicago eliminated drivers which was down to the Elite Eight after Sonoma Gibbs and Dillon advanced from last week s Final Four and now they are here in Indy getting as much attention Larson Hamlin and the array of other big-name drivers Larson and Hamlin spoke with reporters Friday Gibbs and Dillon waited until just before a brief rescheduled practice session took place at Indy This is race car country is what we would call it so being able to race here is an honor Gibbs commented The main goal of module is to go win the race and we re going to do everything we can to put ourselves in position to do that and maybe if we don t do that try to finish as best we can and if that s better than Dillon we ll take it The championship looks like a classic between Dillon a -year veteran who is winless in career Cup starts and Gibbs the Xfinity Series winner in his third full Cup season and the grandson of three-time Super Bowl champion and squad owner Joe Gibbs Like so a large number of NCAA Tournament brackets the bracket results defied expectations Gibbs went into the five-race challenge seeded No Dillon took on the role of Cinderella after starting No And Gibbs has an edge after qualifying fifth Dillon starts th Along the way a few of the favorites such as Hamlin William Byron Chase Briscoe and Kyle Larson fell out Hamlin who is seeking his first Brickyard win in starts first introduced the notion of a tournament on his Actions Detrimental podcast and gave the series good marks for how it s played out I think you get more buy-in from drivers if you know they re financially motivated explained Hamlin who lost to Dillon in the first round I know a lot of people kind of played it off this year but everyone knew about it everyone knew who they had to beat Everyone did care about it I feel like it was implemented fairly well this year Hamlin faces an even bigger hurdle after crashing hard in qualifying He ll start th after Chase Briscoe claimed the pole Now the question becomes who will take home the big prize While Gibbs is trying to race his way into the playoffs and Dillon continues to chase his first Cup win the two drivers also will be paying attention to the race inside Sunday s race And so will the fans It feels like the last three or four weeks I ve done enough media and talked to enough people and had fan upsurge like I ve never seen before that felt like I had won the last three weeks Dillon revealed So it s a weird conundrum It s not a win but it has felt so special to be a part of Bubba s story When Bubba Wallace drove the No car onto the track for his qualifying run Saturday he didn t have any expectations When he climbed out of the car he had the provisional pole and it stayed there until Briscoe s late attempt And while Wallace will start on the front row he wasn t satisfied with how it played out It s a weird feeling right now Wallace reported I had no idea what kind of lap I put together and obviously man so close You know no one wants to finish second in motorsports or whatever it is I sure don t want to So if it s qualifying it s a little kick in the groin but aside from that a pretty good day Family celebration Briscoe s pole-winning run was the second leg of a celebratory weekend for his family which still calls Mitchell Indiana home That s about miles southwest of Indy The first part came Friday when Briscoe s sister got married And Briscoe has a chance to complete the third leg by winning his first Brickyard title But he s also wary about a probable sibling rivalry I would love to cap it off with the Brickyard but I m sure my sister would be mad if I went and kind of topped the wedding Briscoe announced But yeah it s been a fun week to come up here and get to do all the things we ve done Double duty After qualifying th for Sunday s race Katherine Legge took a short break before jumping in her car for the start of the Xfinity race The longtime IndyCar driver is doing double duty this weekend on a track she knows well Legge has started four Indianapolis s majority of in recent times in This season she s made six starts on the stock car circuit two in the Xfinity Series and four so far in the Cup Series And on Sunday she ll hit another milestone becoming the st driver to compete in both the Indianapolis and the Brickyard Odds and ends Shane van Gisbergen will make his first career start on Indy s oval after qualifying th Points leader Chase Elliott starts from the No spot on the grid Despite the qualifying crash Hamlin remained the betting favorite in Indianapolis with Larson and Briscoe not far behind according to BetMGM Sportsbook The trio has just one win on Indy s oval AP 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