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NASCAR recently announced its bracket-style in-season tournament commencing in 2025 during the regular season.
The innovative tournament will debut next season with a prize of $1 million. A total of 32 drivers will compete head-to-head in a bracket-style format. This new concept will be part of the new seven-year media rights deal starting next year.
The drivers will be seeded based on their performance in three races which will be aired during Amazon Prime's broadcast of the season. The competition will be played out over five Cup Series races broadcasted on TNT Sports.
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This concept seemingly took inspiration from the success of the NBA's In-season tournament, which debuted last season.
However, NASCAR's full 2025 schedule has not been announced yet. As part of the media rights deal, the mid-season Cup Series schedule will see a split between the new broadcasting partners TNT Sports and Amazon Prime airing a total of 10 races for NASCAR.
This tournament having a prize of $1 million grabbed 23XI Racing's co-owner Denny Hamlin's attention. He shared his thoughts regarding the new announcement by NASCAR.
Denny Hamlin seemingly pre-empted NASCAR's mid-season tournament last year on a podcast by Dirty Mo Media production.
Denny Hamlin shared an insight about NASCAR's mid-season competition in 2023
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin had an idea for an in-season tournament before it was officially announced this Monday (May 13).
The 43-year-old Hamlin in a podcast talked about an innovative tournament during the regular season. He said:
"I have a fix. We're going to have a bracket challenge. You have 10 weeks to get yourself in the top 32 in points. Five weeks in a row where you have a head-to-head competition and you're seeded based off on where you are in points at week 10. So the number one seed is whoever's first in points, they will be going up against the 32nd-placed guy in points this week. So on, so forth."
Hamlin then continued by explaining the competition procedure, saying:
"Whoever wins between the two, moves on to the next week and that moves you on to the round of 16. Then you're going to have head-to-heads once again, 16 down to 8 down to 4 down to 2."
He also believed that such a contest between the drivers and teams would be "wildly competitive" as far as ratings are concerned.
"This will create so many storylines and you would have no idea how much the teams would change their strategies in the middle of the race to beat whoever they're up against that given week to move on to the next round," added Hamlin.
Denny Hamlin is currently third in the NASCAR Cup Series standings with 447 points.
