Predicting the winner of NASCAR’s $1 million in-season bracket challenge

NASCAR’s annual All-Star Race offers no points and has no impact on the champion, but one million dollars is plenty of incentive for the drivers to give it their all. Well, it’s no longer the only event that offers such a prize as NASCAR introduces an in-season tournament that will span five weeks through the entire broadcast run on TNT.

The driver who prevails in the end will collect the $1 million prize, and any fan who can fill out a perfect bracket will also earn that much. We’re not so bold to believe we can get it all perfect, especially with a street course, road course, and a drafting-track in the mix — but maybe we can pick the overall winner?

First, feel free to take a look at the Round 1 matchups, which you can find HERE. And below, you can find our complete list of predictions and then we’ll take a deeper dive into all, focusing on the ultimate winner.

In-Season Challenge Predictions

Yes, Hendrick versus Hendrick in the final doesn’t seem like the boldest prediction, but we never said we were going out on a limb here.

However, the fact that there is a street course and a road course in the middle of this tournament is going to massively help drivers like Daniel Suarez and Ty Gibbs, who should be quite competitive at both Sonoma and Chicago.

However, we believe the final matchup will come down two Hendrick champions as the sport’s Most Popular Driver and the versatile sprint car star go head-to-head in the Brickyard 400. Now, let’s talk about how they get to the finals in the first place.

Round 1 is a difficult race to predict as the reconfigured Atlanta behaves more like a chaotic superspeedway these days. Chase Elliott has won at this version of his home track before, and while Kyle Larson has been unlucky when it comes to incidents at Atlanta, he nearly won this race earlier this year. Elliott will beat Austin Dillon, who hasn’t finished higher than 16th at Atlanta in the Next Gen era and would need some good fortune to fall his way. Larson and Tyler Reddick feels more like a toss-up but 23XI Racing has just been off as of late and we don’t expect their fortune to change anytime soon.

Turning right and left

Now onto Round 2 where NASCAR heads to the Chicago Street Course. Elliott has been very strong in the road cours events this year, and there’s no reason to expect that to change in the near future. He will defeat Josh Berry, who just isn’t that great at these type of tracks. His average finish on road courses this year is 26th, and he placed 36th at Chicago in 2024. As for Larson, he was very fast at Chicago last year before he wrecked in the rain. He will beat Carson Hocevar, who has been in the spotlight for both good and bad reasons lately. Those distractions, along with his dismal showing at Mexico City and a target on his back, leads me to believe that he will fall to Larson in Chicago.

Round 3 is another road course, this time at Sonoma, Once again, we should absolutely expect both Elliott and Larson to be contenders. Larson is actually the defending winner of this race, dominating in 2024. Ryan Preece, while impressively consistent, doesn’t stand much of a chance if he faces Larson at Sonoma. Elliott’s fight will be much tougher as he has to deal with Christopher Bell, another very capable road racer. However, I give Elliott the edge just because of how remarkably consistent he has been in 2025. Elliott has zero DNFs and no finishes outside the top 20.

The final two oval races

Kyle Larson, Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

Photo by: Sean Gardner / Getty Images

Round 4 brings NASCAR back to a more traditional oval at Dover. Both Elliott and Larson have won there before and if things go the way we predicted, then Dover should be a rather easy win for the two of them. Both Suarez and Gibbs surprisingly make it to the semi-finals, helped by back-to-back road/street courses where they should run very well. But at Dover, they won’t be to able to match these two Hendrick drivers.

And with that, we arrive at the final showdown at Indianapolis. Larson is the defending winner of the Brickyard 400, so it would seem like he is the easy choice in this situation. However, Elliott was also very strong at IMS last year, but a mid-race penalty hindered his efforts. And while we expect Larson to have the edge at Indy, Elliott takes the big prize in the end for one reason — consistency.

As previously stated, Elliott is the most consistent driver this year with the best average finish in the field. Larson, while fast, has been involved in several incidents and trouble often finds him. If he can keep his nose clean in the crown jewel race, he might just win it all, but we think Elliott will be rock solid no matter what and take the $1 million for himself (even though he wasn’t even aware of the prize until a few days ago).