Thirteen races.
That is how deep we are in a wild 2026 with a new format, and the baker’s dozen also represents the halfway point of this wacky regular season.
How crazy is it?
For starters, defending NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson has unimaginably gone 37 consecutive regular-season points races without a win.
That’s like starting at the Daytona 500, failing to find Victory Lane during a frustrating season and coming back to Florida for the next Speedweeks after the calendar has flipped with a big zero in the win column.
It has been an entire campaign for the No. 5 car — plus one.
The craziness was truly evident Sunday night when Kyle Busch’s former trucks series driver and close 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 event into the Coke 559.5.
However, the victory is penned into the record books just like the rain-shortened wins for Buddy Baker, Jimmie Johnson, David Reutimann and Bell. And also David Pearson’s 1974 victory that was trimmed to 360 laps for the nation’s energy crisis.
The win moved Suarez (-270 points) up to 10th in points from 14th, gridding him one spot behind teammate Carson Hocevar (-264) and giving Spire Motorsports two wins in 2026.
The next three drivers in front of the Spire ones in points are Bell, Chris Buescher and Larson, who have combined for exactly no wins.
Collect your payout if you had Spire Motorsports with two victories after 13 races while that trio of heavy hitters is completely winless.
“A bummer, just wasn’t meant to be today,” said Joe Gibbs Racing’s Bell, who won the 2024 600 after rain stopped it on Lap 249.
The frustrated No. 20 driver would not go all Milli Vanilli and blame it on the rain, adding, “That’s 2026 for us.”
This Sunday east of Nashville, the Cup Series will send out its best for the 300-lap Cracker Barrel 400 in Lebanon, Tenn.
It will be the sixth time for the series to travel to Nashville Superspeedway, a 1.33-mile, concrete, tri-oval track with 14 degrees of banking in the turns.
Of note, of course, is that it’s not that Nashville speedway, the venerable old short track that’s the second-longest running racing venue in the U.S.
That one is the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, where a Cup race was held every year from 1958 to 1984. More on that maybe later this season.
Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney is the defending winner in Nashville.
A dark-horse first-timer for Sunday night: Front Row Motorsports’ Zane Smith.
Then driving the No. 71 Chevrolet for Spire, the current No. 38 Ford driver finished a career-best second in the 2024 Music City event behind winner Joey Logano, who miraculously held on racing on fumes during multiple restarts in the 15-caution thriller that ran 31 extra laps.
Smith, 26, led 31 circuits in Sunday’s 600 and has been up front often this season.
“Comparing last year to this year, I really like where we’re at,” the Californian said. “I feel like we’ve taken that next step and are a lot stronger in a lot of areas. Our whole weekend seems to be going smoother and just better from a performance standpoint.”
Actually, Smith winning Sunday wouldn’t be that much of a longshot at all.
–Field Level Media
