NASCAR set for summer stretch March Madness style. Will new tournament end summer schedule malaise?

LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — It’s time to bust out the brackets, pick an upset or two, and follow winners on the road — a journey over city streets, concrete and bricks — to the final four and beyond.

Totally awesome, baby?

Forget all the upset specials in March.

NASCAR will find out soon enough if its attempt to snap out of a mid-summer malaise with its first in-season tournament is a success with drivers and fans as it strives to boost engagement and build buzz in the staid regular season.

The concept has already juiced enthusiasm in NASCAR to levels not seen since the halcyon days when Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough duked it out in the 1979 Daytona 500.

“To be really honest with you,” 2020 NASCAR champion Chase Elliott said, “I have not paid any attention to it.”

Maybe a look at the matchup will get NASCAR’s most popular driver pumped!

Elliott is seeded fifth against No. 28 seed Austin Dillon in the first round of the head-to-head showdown in the race-within-the-race set for this weekend at the track better known as Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Here’s a refresher for Elliott and any other sports fan who missed out on the specifics of NASCAR joining the in-season tournament party, much like attempts in the NBA, NHL, and, of course, throughout the world in soccer.

NASCAR is set to start the engines on a five-race, bracket-style tournament called the In-Season Challenge in the midst of the summer slate, which comes with a $1 million prize to the winner.

The final 32-driver field was set by results of the last three races at Michigan, Mexico City and Pocono. The drivers are paired in head-to-head matchups based on seeding, with the winners advancing to the next round in a bracket format that mirrors the NCAA basketball tournaments.

Buoyed by a win at Michigan and a runner-up finish at Pocono, Denny Hamlin earned the top seed. He’ll square off — race off? — against No. 32 seed Ty Dillon. Pocono winner Chase Briscoe is the No. 2 seed and is pitted against No. 31 seed Noah Gragson.

Chris Buescher is third, Christopher Bell fourth and Elliott fifth, among notable names.

The format is single elimination with the field cut to 16 at the street race in Chicago, eight at Sonoma, four on the lone concrete track in the series at Dover and the final two over the yard of bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The Challenge is part of NASCAR’s media rights deal that includes TNT, and the Atlanta-based cable network will broadcast all five races in the tournament, starting with the 400-miler in Atlanta.

Aside from a shrug from Elliott and a few others, drivers are intrigued by the idea of increasing the stakes in each race beyond a playoff berth, trophy and the winner’s purse.

“I love it. I think it’s great,” three-time Cup champion Joey Logano said. “I think it’s placed perfectly where it is in the season. This is kind of that moment where the newness is worn off. We’re into the rhythm, we’re racing every week. It’s starting to start a little bit of, who’s going to be in the playoffs, who’s not, the cutoff line all those types of things. But it’s not really the main story quite yet.”

Stories are what sell, of course, and the sizzle in Pocono over the weekend had little to do with which drivers or teams are the ones to beat for the 2025 championship. Rather, it was whether two pedestrian drivers were going to fight, the end of Amazon Prime's run of wildly-popular telecasts and Hall of Fame driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s win in his first race as a crew chief.

“This really spices up the mid-part of the season,” Logano said.

So does placing a few bucks on No. 11 to win.

But as of Monday afternoon, most sports gambling sites did not offer odds on specific matchups headed into Atlanta. NASCAR is offering $1 million to a winning fan with a perfect bracket in its fantasy game.

There are some quirks to the bracket: Shane van Gisbergen won the Cup race in Mexico City and is not in the field while series points leader William Byron is only a No. 9 seed. The tournament boasts matchups in the first-round of past Cup champions (Kyle Busch-Brad Keselowski), former teammates (Briscoe-Gragson), and even best friends (Bubba Wallace-Daniel Suarez).

The idea for the challenge was largely championed by Hamlin, a three-time Daytona 500 champion who floated the idea of a mid-season tournament on his “Actions Detrimental" podcast. When NASCAR bought into the idea and announced the creation of the tournament last year, Hamlin called the tournament on social media “such a win for our sport and drivers.” He jokingly added, “I will collect my 1M royalty next season.”

Hamlin's on deck and clearly a favorite to win it all, with three wins this year for Joe Gibbs Racing and the top seed.

(And let's not haggle over who gets credit in court.)

“I’m a sports guy, so I’m going to be engaged with it," Hamlin said. "I’ll know who I will have to beat next week. I’ve told the team, we are going to try and do what we can. We are going to be up against it because we are going to tracks that aren’t very favorable to me. But we are going to try to do our best to beat that one car for the next four to five weeks.”

NASCAR will present the tournament winner at Indianapolis with a ring, jackets, trophy and — oh yeah, a million bucks.

That's enough cash to get anyone's attention — even Elliott's.

“I don't know what you get. You get anything,” Elliott asked.

“Oh, a million dollars to the winner? Then yeah, we want to win.”

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Chris Buescher walks to his car before a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Hermanos Rodríguez race track in Mexico City, Sunday, June 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

Chase Briscoe celebrates in Victory Lane after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Pocono Raceway, Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Long Pond, Pa. (AP Photo/Derik Hamilton)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is meeting with oil executives at the White House on Friday in hopes of securing $100 billion in investments to revive Venezuela’s ability to fully tap into its expansive reserves of petroleum — a plan that rides on their comfort in making commitments in a country plagued by instability, inflation and uncertainty.

Since the U.S. military raid to capture former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, Trump has quickly pivoted to portraying the move as a newfound economic opportunity for the U.S., seizing tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, saying the U.S. is taking over the sales of 30 million to 50 million barrels of previously sanctioned Venezuelan oil and will be controlling sales worldwide indefinitely.

On Friday, U.S. forces seized their fifth tanker over the past month that has been linked to Venezuelan oil. The action reflected the determination of the U.S. to fully control the exporting, refining and production of Venezuelan petroleum, a sign of the Trump administration's plans for ongoing involvement in the sector as it seeks commitments from private companies.

It's all part of a broader push by Trump to keep gasoline prices low. At a time when many Americans are concerned about affordability, the incursion in Venezuela melds Trump’s assertive use of presidential powers with an optical spectacle meant to convince Americans that he can bring down energy prices.

The meeting, set for 2:30 p.m. EST, will be open to the news media, according to an update to the president's daily schedule. “At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at The White House,” Trump said Friday in a pre-dawn social media post.

Trump is set to meet with executives from 17 oil companies, according to the White House. Among the companies attending are Chevron, which still operates in Venezuela, and ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, which both had oil projects in the country that were lost as part of a 2007 nationalization of private businesses under Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

The president is meeting with a wide swath of domestic and international companies with interests ranging from construction to the commodity markets. Other companies slated to be at the meeting include Halliburton, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Singapore-based Trafigura, Italy-based Eni and Spain-based Repsol.

Large U.S. oil companies have so far largely refrained from affirming investments in Venezuela as contracts and guarantees need to be in place. Trump has suggested on social media that America would help to backstop any investments.

Venezuela’s oil production has slumped below one million barrels a day. Part of Trump's challenge to turn that around will be to convince oil companies that his administration has a stable relationship with Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez, as well as protections for companies entering the market.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are slated to attend the oil executives meeting, according to the White House.

Meanwhile, the United States and Venezuelan governments said Friday they were exploring the possibility of r estoring diplomatic relations between the two countries, and that a delegation from the Trump administration arrived to the South American nation on Friday.

The small team of U.S. diplomats and diplomatic security officials traveled to Venezuela to make a preliminary assessment about the potential re-opening of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, the State Department said in a statement.

Trump also announced on Friday he’d meet with President Gustavo Petro in early February, but called on the Colombian leader to make quick progress on stemming flow of cocaine into the U.S.

Trump, following the ouster of Maduro, had made vague threats to take similar action against Petro. Trump abruptly changed his tone Wednesday about his Colombian counterpart after a friendly phone call in which he invited Petro to visit the White House.

President Donald Trump waves as he walks off stage after speaking to House Republican lawmakers during their annual policy retreat, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)