CONCORD, N.C. (WBTV) – The son of a NASCAR champion returned to victory lane at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Monday night.

Brexton Busch — son of Cup Series star Kyle Busch — drove his No. 18 bandolero to the win on the speedway’s quarter-mile frontstretch track. He also raced in the legend cars race and finished fourth.

The win came on the first night of the 2025 Summer Shootout, which is a summerlong slate of racing action at the iconic speedway in Concord. Busch won his first race at Charlotte during the 2024 Summer Shootout.

The 10-year-old Busch is following in his father’s footsteps and has shown a knack for winning. His social media has shown his racing journey to his 100,000-plus Instagram followers, with starts on both dirt and asphalt in a variety of car types.

Busch has several more years until he can compete in any of NASCAR’s top three series but he appears destined to one day race at the sport’s top level. Drivers must be at least 16 years old to race in the Truck Series, but even then, they can only compete on road courses or ovals 1.25 miles or less. To race full-time in the Truck, Xfinity or Cup Series, drivers must be at least 18.

While the younger Busch continues to gain experience, his dad currently sits squarely on the Cup Series playoff bubble.

With 11 races left in NASCAR’s regular season, Kyle Busch is tied with Ryan Preece for the 16th and final spot. Busch hasn’t won since June 2023, but of the next 11 races, four are at road courses and two others are at superspeedway-style tracks — both of which he has shown speed at in 2025.

Also Read: Historic North Carolina speedway up for sale just weeks after NASCAR returned

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This weekend, Nascar will race at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City, marking the first points-paying Cup Series race held outside the US in the modern era.

Technically, a points-paying race did take place in Ontario, Canada, back in 1958 but that was well before the start of what’s widely considered modern Nascar, which began in 1972. Since then, there has never been an event like this.

Exhibition events have taken Nascar to places like Australia and Japan, while from 2005 to 2008 the second-tier Xfinity Series raced at the circuit hosting this weekend’s action. The Cup Series, though, is a different matter entirely.

Nascar may be the governing body for multiple series but, for those outside the US especially, Nascar is the Cup Series and the product that needs to be brought to their doorstep.

Still, introducing an international race to the official Cup Series schedule is far from straightforward. Unlike Formula One, which has long operated with a global infrastructure, Nascar is not an internationally established series and faces real challenges when expanding to new markets.

Lessons from Chicago

In many ways, the groundwork for Nascar’s expansion into Mexico began with the downtown event in Chicago, despite that not being an international event.

The 2023 edition was the first street race that Nascar had ever held, a sign that the series wanted to start doing things a little differently. However, it also highlighted that Nascar was not appropriately set up for the various logistical challenges.

Jeff Wohlschlaeger, head of sales for Nascar at the time, told BlackBook Motorsport that Nascar failed to anticipate “the level of work that would be required” for the event. The race ended up costing a reported US$50 million, which far exceeded the original budget of between US$15 million and US$25 million.

While Mexico will present its own unique challenges, the experience in Chicago means Nascar is far more prepared than it was previously.

Nascar’s most recent attempt to branch out into new markets has not been without teething issues, but these have been invaluable lessons for the series’ expansion into Mexico

“There’s some learnings [from Chicago] and quite a few of the people that work on the Chicago event are also spending time helping promote Mexico City as well,” Ben Kennedy, Nascar’s executive vice president and chief venue and racing innovations officer, tells BlackBook Motorsport.

“The biggest [learning] is how we think about marketing and promoting events and taking it to market. One example of that is we’ve branded the weekend in Chicago and the weekend in Mexico with the Nascar name. It’s important for us to be able to build the Nascar name in Chicago as well as Mexico.”

Indeed, Nascar races are usually heavily commercialised and centred around brand partnerships, like the Coca-Cola 600. But all the marketing in the buildup to this weekend has focused on the ‘Nascar Mexico City Weekend’, before being called the ‘Viva México 250’ one month out from its debut.

One major difference from Chicago is that the series won’t be promoting the event itself. Instead, the weekend is being led by Oseca, the promoter behind the Formula One race at the same circuit. Yet, as Kennedy points out, it remains a great undertaking for Nascar.

“The travel and logistics, travelling a pretty good distance from Michigan and having our entire industry go to Mexico City, it’s a far drive,” he explains.

“We have to coordinate flights and hotel rooms, and logistics when people get on the ground, as well as a couple hundred haulers that are going to be travelling down there as well.”

‘We felt the best first step would be to go south’

Kennedy reveals that Nascar “had multiple conversations across many countries and continents.” So why choose Mexico?

Nascar wanted to make a statement at the start of its new seven-year media rights deal, which is reportedly worth US$7.7 billion across four broadcasters. One of those, Amazon Prime Video, holds a five-race package that includes this weekend’s event, marking the first time the Cup Series has aired exclusively on a streaming platform.

The significance of going abroad for this race should help drive viewers to Prime Video, though the decision to pick Mexico also reflected practical considerations given the logistical challenges meant Nascar couldn’t venture too far afield.

“The amount of inventory that we carry through our Cup Series schedule makes it very difficult for us to travel from the United States overseas, pack our stuff up, and then be back the next weekend, seeing that we have 38 [races],” says Kennedy.

While Mexico is the most logical choice for now, Kennedy adds that Nascar will “take a race north of the border” at some point soon, meaning Canada is very much in the mix for a future event.

“We want to focus on North America,” continues Kennedy. “We’ve had a few conversations in Mexico. We’ve also talked to folks north of the border as well at a few different locations and we’d still love to have an event up in Canada at some point.

“But with everything on the table, and the great partners that we already have down in Mexico, we felt like the best first step for us would be to go south.”

The race was officially unveiled at an event at the circuit in August 2024, featuring appearances from Ben Kennedy and Daniel Suárez

Maximising the Mexican market

One of Nascar’s drivers is Daniel Suárez, who graduated from the Nascar Mexico Series. It highlights the organisation’s existing presence in the country and sits alongside similar regional series in Canada, Brazil and Europe. All of these offer insight into Nascar’s broader international expansion plans.

“It’s really important for us for building the overall awareness and relevance of Nascar in these markets prior to us considering it for a Cup race,” Kennedy says. “But, just as important, we want to use it as a pipeline for the future stars of our sport.

“Daniel Suárez is a great example of someone that started in Mexico and is now in our Cup Series, and we would like to see the same for Brazil and Canada and our other territories too.”

Nascar will also look to maximise its visibility in Mexico during its visit through a free-to-air (FTA) broadcast deal with US-based Spanish-language media giant TelevisaUnivision.

Notably, Nascar gave the Spanish-language rights to a local broadcaster rather than Prime Video, which is airing the race in the US. This underscores how eager series executives are for the event to reach the widest possible audience.

“It was one of the first things when we decided that we’re going to Mexico City,” notes Kennedy. “It was a priority for us to find a free-to-air partner so that we could have the distribution and exposure going into the weekend and race day.”

Suárez is the only Mexican driver to have ever won a Cup Series race, while only two drivers from the country – Jorge Goeters and Pedro Rodríguez – have ever made it to the top level of Nascar previously

Avoiding F1 comparisons

Working closely with Oseca and racing at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez inevitably invites comparisons between Nascar and Formula One, something that is only increasing as the open-wheel series grows its presence in the US. 

Nascar’s global expansion plans are, in part, a response to Formula One’s rising influence, as well as the increasing competition for eyeballs.

Kennedy himself stops short of making any direct comparisons between the pair.

“Even though we’re going to be racing on a very similar layout to Formula One, and I would guess that many fans that come on June 15th have gone to a Formula One race, so much of it’s going to feel different,” he says.

“The closeness of competition, the level of aggression that our drivers are going to have … they’re going to see a different style of racing that’s going to be true to what Nascar is.”

Evidently, Nascar is keen to distance itself from Formula One amid mounting pressure.

Since the first race of the Formula One season on 16th March, Nascar’s average viewership has been 2.56 million. Formula One is not that far behind, averaging 1.33 million viewers over the same period.

Take out the first three races of the Formula One season, which aired during the middle of the night in the US, and the gap narrows further: 2.53 million for Nascar versus 1.58 million for Formula One.

Formula One is also attracting viewers in the sought-after 18 to 49 demographic, with last month’s Miami Grand Prix drawing 917,000 viewers in that age group.

In this context, it’s easy to understand why Nascar feels the need to evolve and also why Mexico won’t be a one-off. But the first hurdle to clear will be ensuring this weekend’s event is a success, laying the foundation for a long-term future on the schedule.

“The biggest thing is making sure that we strike the right tone when we go to Mexico, that we have people that are following the weekend, that come to the event, that tune into the race weekend,” Kennedy says.

“We feel like we’ve done a lot of things in our power, especially over the past few months, to make sure that this event is successful.

“Hopefully this is just the catalyst and the start to many years of racing in Mexico.”

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Mac McLaughlin, left, walks to the front of his 2014 Shelby GT500 as about 30 campers look at the vehicle Monday at the Terry Lee Rogers Recreation Center in Texarkana, Ark. McLaughlin was a special guest on the first day of Motorsports Week at the summer camp. He gave the campers a history lesson on the vehicle’s namesake, Carroll Shelby, a native of Camp County, Texas. For more information on the series of weeklong camps at the recreation center, call 870-779-4964.

Critics have labeled Formula One as arrogant and elitist at times, which can seem unfair. Then you see decisions like the one F1 made with its 2026 calendar on Tuesday and think: “Eh, maybe not.”

F1’s 2026 schedule features a breathtakingly disrespectful move: a direct head-to-head conflict between the Indianapolis 500 and the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal — seemingly at the same time, on the same day, on the same continent.

The Indy 500 typically has a start time of 12:45 p.m. ET and runs for about three hours. This weekend is, coincidentally, the Canadian GP in Montreal. It has a start time of 2 p.m. ET, and a typical F1 race lasts about 90 minutes to two hours. If those time slots remain next year, they’ll directly overlap for the entirety of the F1 race.

F1 doesn’t appear to care. In a post-“Drive to Survive” world, the series has become an international behemoth, gaining a substantial fan following in the United States. A country in which Michael Schumacher could once go completely unrecognized now hosts three grands prix and sees the drivers treated like rock stars; fans pay record-breaking ticket prices and shell out jaw-dropping amounts of money for merchandise sales just to be part of the trendiest sport on the planet.

F1 immediately becomes the biggest event at each stop around the world. At the top of the motorsports food chain, F1’s actions give the impression of a lion that does not fight with hyenas.

Except in this environment, shouldn’t F1 care? It’s not as if F1 leaders are unaware of the Indy 500; the race is part of the Triple Crown of Motorsport, along with the 24 Hours of Le Mans (sports cars) and F1’s Monaco Grand Prix. Two-time F1 world champion Fernando Alonso skipped Monaco for two years to try to win Indy — which would have been his third crown jewel.

And yet F1 — which is owned by an American company, Colorado-based Liberty Media — is now choosing to trample over what many regard as the biggest auto race in the world.

Sure, maybe it won’t hurt Indy domestically. Montreal probably isn’t going to pull many U.S. fans away from the 500, which had a sellout crowd of nearly 350,000 people this year and got its highest TV viewership in 17 years (more than 7 million people). Montreal had 1.8 million viewers in the U.S. last June.

Even F1 drivers look forward to the Indy 500 every year. (James Gilbert / Getty Images)

Still, why would F1 even consider this? Its calendar needed to have the Miami Grand Prix and Montreal paired to reduce travel headaches, but why not move Miami one week earlier to avoid an obvious conflict between Montreal and Indy? Instead of weighing the optics, F1 never hit the brakes on its quest for motorsports domination and plowed right into a head-to-head battle with one of the most cherished traditions on the international racing calendar.

Maybe F1, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, forgot the Indy 500 always runs on the last Sunday of May. Easy to do. After all, the Indy 500 has only been around for 109 years.

Motorsports fans are constantly pitted against one another by those who argue one series is superior or claim another is inferior, when the reality is that a racing fan should be a racing fan. Each series offers something unique, and the racing world isn’t big enough to tear itself apart; motorsports are at their best when fans get to sit down and watch a variety of series.

That was no better illustrated than during the annual “Motorsports Christmas” in the United States, when even NASCAR fans would get up early to watch the Monaco GP before the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 as part of their annual tripleheader tradition. In fact, when F1 announced in November that Monaco would move to June starting in 2026, there was even speculation it would clear the way for an interested F1 driver to race at Indy.

Who would have thought the actual development would be to run an F1 race at the same time?

This is the exact type of thing that happens when a racing series begins to fly too close to the sun. And F1 sure is soaring. Liberty Media reported the sport’s revenue rose to $3.65 billion in 2024. The summer blockbuster F1 movie starring Brad Pitt will be released in late June. The series just struck huge deals with Disney and Pepsi. Brands and celebrities alike are falling all over themselves to be associated with F1.

F1’s business is thriving. (Clive Rose / Getty Images)

It seems like there’s nothing that can slow F1’s speed, and maybe that’s true. But it’s worth reminding everyone what happened to NASCAR in the early 2000s.

Back then, NASCAR was the hottest sport in America and had designs on challenging the NFL for sports supremacy in the United States (yes, this was really a thing at the time). “Cars” and “Talladega Nights” were summer blockbusters in the same year. Jeff Gordon hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 2003. Racetracks could not build enough seats for the millions who attended races each year. Fortune 500 companies flocked to have their logos on race cars in $30 million deals.

But NASCAR overestimated the strength and longevity of its popularity, and suddenly, the general public moved on to the next thing. Almost overnight, NASCAR was no longer cool in pop culture. TV ratings tanked. Companies left. Racetracks “right-sized” their venues by removing grandstands.

NASCAR has spent nearly the last 20 years trying to overcome some of the poor decision-making brought on by greed, ego and a belief that their run was only just beginning.

F1 isn’t going to take a dive anytime soon. Even if Americans tune out at some point, it’s still wildly popular around the world and will remain so for quite some time.

But the motorsports ecosystem is fragile, and every racing series is only a few poor decisions away from steering itself toward the wall at high speed. Choosing to challenge the Indy 500 seems like one of those choices for F1.

(Top photos of Josef Newgarden and Max Verstappen: Justin Casterline / Getty Images; Mark Thompson / Getty Images)

There will be 37 Cup cars and 39 Xfinity cars competing in this historic event at Mexico City. The Xfinity field, which is usually capped at 38 grid spots, has been expanded to 40 for this event only. As a result, everyone on the entry list will get to compete in the big show.

The Cup field includes the usual field of 36 with all of the expected full-time drivers, and just one open entry. That will be No. 78 Live Fast Motorsports Chevrolet with Katherine Legge behind the wheel.

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The Xfinity field will include a handful of Cup drivers, hoping to gain more experience on the road course. NASCAR’s top Mexican-born talent — Daniel Suarez — will be driving the No. 9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet.  A pair of Joe Gibbs Racing drivers have also entered the event with Ty Gibbs driving the No. 19 JGR Toyota and Christopher Bell driving the No. 24 Sam Hunt Racing Toyota.

There will be a total of three Mexican-born drivers in the NASCAR Xfinity Series field. Along with Suarez, Truck Series regular Andres Perez De Lara will make his Xfinity debut in the No. 91 DGM Racing Chevrolet. Additionally, 2020 NASCAR Mexico Series champion Rubén Rovelo will make his debut as well in the No. 35 Joey Gase Motorsports Chevrolet.

NASCAR Cup Mexico City entry list

NASCAR Xfinity Mexico City entry list

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