13 races.
That’s how deep we’re in a wild 2026 with a brand new format, and the baker’s dozen additionally represents the midway level of this wacky common season.
How loopy is it?
For starters, defending NASCAR Cup Collection champion Kyle Larson has unimaginably gone 37 consecutive regular-season factors races with out a win.
That is like beginning on the Daytona 500, failing to seek out Victory Lane throughout a irritating season and coming again to Florida for the following Speedweeks after the calendar has flipped with an enormous zero within the win column.
It has been a complete marketing campaign for the No. 5 automobile — plus one.
The craziness was actually evident Sunday night time when Kyle Busch’s former vehicles sequence driver and shut good friend Daniel Suarez notched his third win by beating Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin when the heavens opened up and ended the Coca-Cola 600 after 373 laps, which turned the crown jewel occasion into the Coke 559.5.
Nonetheless, the victory is penned into the report books identical to the rain-shortened wins for Buddy Baker, Jimmie Johnson, David Reutimann and Bell. And in addition David Pearson’s 1974 victory that was trimmed to 360 laps for the nation’s vitality disaster.
The win moved Suarez (-270 factors) as much as tenth in factors from 14th, gridding him one spot behind teammate Carson Hocevar (-264) and giving Spire Motorsports two wins in 2026.
The following three drivers in entrance of the Spire ones in factors are Bell, Chris Buescher and Larson, who’ve mixed for precisely no wins.
Acquire your payout in the event you had Spire Motorsports with two victories after 13 races whereas that trio of heavy hitters is totally winless.
“A bummer, simply wasn’t meant to be immediately,” mentioned Joe Gibbs Racing’s Bell, who gained the 2024 600 after rain stopped it on Lap 249.
The annoyed No. 20 driver wouldn’t go all Milli Vanilli and blame it on the rain, including, “That is 2026 for us.”
This Sunday east of Nashville, the Cup Collection will ship out its greatest for the 300-lap Cracker Barrel 400 in Lebanon, Tenn.
Will probably be the sixth time for the sequence to journey to Nashville Superspeedway, a 1.33-mile, concrete, tri-oval monitor with 14 levels of banking within the turns.
Of notice, after all, is that it isn’t that Nashville speedway, the venerable previous brief monitor that is the second-longest operating racing venue within the U.S.
That one is the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, the place a Cup race was held yearly from 1958 to 1984. Extra on that possibly later this season.
Workforce Penske’s Ryan Blaney is the defending winner in Nashville.
A dark-horse first-timer for Sunday night time: Entrance Row Motorsports’ Zane Smith.
Then driving the No. 71 Chevrolet for Spire, the present No. 38 Ford driver completed a career-best second within the 2024 Music Metropolis occasion behind winner Joey Logano, who miraculously held on racing on fumes throughout a number of restarts within the 15-caution thriller that ran 31 further laps.
Smith, 26, led 31 circuits in Sunday’s 600 and has been up entrance usually this season.
“Evaluating final yr to this yr, I actually like the place we’re at,” the Californian mentioned. “I really feel like we have taken that subsequent step and are rather a lot stronger in plenty of areas. Our entire weekend appears to be going smoother and simply higher from a efficiency standpoint.”
Really, Smith successful Sunday would not be that a lot of a longshot in any respect.
