NASCAR in-season tournament bracket set

The first round of the NASCAR in-season tournament begins Saturday night at EchoPark Speedway (aka Atlanta Motor Speedway) as teams now have their path to the $1 million bonus.

Atlanta kicks off the new event before it makes stops in Chicago, Sonoma, Dover, and finishes at Indianapolis. The tournament is a simple head-to-head matchup for drivers, with the highest finisher among them advancing.

The top seeds were Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, Chris Buescher and Christopher Bell. NASCAR determined the seeding by a driver’s best finish from the three races held at Michigan, Mexico City and Pocono. Hamlin, of course, won at Michigan, and Briscoe won at Pocono.

The first-round matchups are:

(No. 1) Denny Hamlin vs (No. 32) Ty Dillon

(No. 2) Chase Briscoe vs (No. 31) Noah Gragson

(No. 3) Chris Buescher vs (No. 30) Todd Gilliland

(No. 4) Christopher Bell vs (No. 29) Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

(No. 5) Chase Elliott vs (No. 28) Austin Dillon

(No. 6) Ty Gibbs vs (No. 27) Justin Haley

(No. 7) Ryan Blaney vs (No. 26) Carson Hocevar

(No. 8) Alex Bowman vs (No. 25) Joey Logano

(No. 9) Bubba Wallace vs (No. 24) Daniel Suarez

(No. 10) Kyle Larson vs (No. 23) Tyler Reddick

(No. 11) Michael McDowell vs (No. 22) AJ Allmendinger

(No. 12) John Hunter Nemechek vs (No. 21) Josh Berry

(No. 13) Ross Chastain vs (No. 20) Erik Jones

(No. 14) Zane Smith vs (No. 19) Austin Cindric

(No. 15) Ryan Preece vs (No. 18) William Byron

(No. 16) Kyle Busch vs (No. 17) Brad Keselowski

TNT Sports will carry the duration of the tournament. The channel begins its five-race portion of Cup Series coverage this weekend (Saturday, 7pm ET). They will also offer an alternate broadcast for fans interested (on truTV) that is hosted by Larry McReynolds and Jeff Burton. They will break down the storylines and bracket each week.