Everything NASCAR got right, wrong about In-Season Challenge

After five weeks of exciting battles and bracket-busting upsets, NASCAR's trial run at the In-Season Challenge wrapped up on Sunday in the Brickyard 400.

Although he only finished 21st, Ty Gibbs, the No. 6 seed in the bracket, defeated the Cinderella story and No. 32 seed, Ty Dillon (28th), to win the $1M prize.

Now that the five-week tournament is in the books, what should we make of it after its debut?

For the most part, it did what it was intended to when it was first announced. The idea was to have a head-to-head, bracket-style tournament similar to "March Madness." Two drivers would be pitted against one another for that particular race and the highest finisher of the two would advance to the next round.

Something else to consider is the length of NASCAR's season, which begins in February and usually wraps up either the first or second weekend of November, making for the second-longest season in all of American sports (Golf).

After the first third of the season is completed and drivers have already tackled prestigious races like the Daytona 500 and Coca-Cola 600, the summer months present a grind, both physically and mentally, before the playoffs begin. 

The In-Season Challenge was designed to give drivers some bragging rights and create more battles throughout the field that we may not otherwise see if the $1M was not on the line.

As with most ideas, however, there were some drawbacks to NASCAR's In-Season Challenge that deserve improvement in the future.

One is how seeding was determined for the tournament. Instead of rewarding drivers for their points position, the top 32 drivers in the standings were seeded based on their highest finishes in the three races at Michigan, Mexico City and Pocono leading up to the first race of the challenge at EchoPark Speedway (Atlanta).

That resulted in some drivers at the bottom of the standings getting better seeds than the more consistent drivers up to that point and even pitted championship drivers like Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch against one another in the first round.

The other issue was the schedule of tracks in the challenge. The decision to put EchoPark Speedway as the opener led to several upsets and eliminated three of the top four seeds (Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, Christopher Bell), in addition to No. 7 seed Ryan Blaney and William Byron, who was underseeded to begin with.

Shane van Gisbergen won the following two races at Chicago and Sonoma, and he was not even in the field.

Going forward, a better balance of tracks could be implemented to ensure the top drivers are not wiped out of the challenge in the first race. That does not mean a drafting-style track like EchoPark Speedway should be taken out of the challenge, but perhaps starting the challenge with so much uncertainty and unpredictability is not the best choice.

If the points system is factored in to give the most consistent drivers an advantage and more straightforward tracks are included in the challenge, we would likely have a battle toward the front of the field to decide the champion instead of 21st-place being the clincher like it was on Sunday.

Nevertheless, NASCAR's In-Season Challenge had a solid debut and created some exciting battles as it was intended to. With the right tweaks, it could be even better in the years to come.