Rev up your engines and throw on your favorite vintage race jacket as NASCAR Night presented by NASCAR Hall of Fame rolls into Cook Out Summer Shootout, Tuesday, June 24. The special night is a full-throttle tribute to motorsports, blending the rising stars of grassroots racing with the star power of NASCAR’s top series.

Fans can expect edge-of-their-seat action across three Bandolero divisions and five Legend Car categories as drivers go wheel-to-wheel under the lights. Watch as rising stars like Keelan Harvick, Brexton Busch and Jake Bollman battle on the frontstretch quarter-mile before Cup Series heavyweights take the stage. A number of drivers – some of whom came up through the Legends ranks before becoming household names – are already making waves. Kyle Busch has scored two wins in the first three rounds and Bubba Wallace has powered into the top three in back-to-back weeks. Adding to the buzz, NASCAR Mexico winner Shane Van Gisbergen and international standout Scott McLaughlin are turning heads in their Summer Shootout debuts, lighting up the Dilling Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electrical division.

Off the track, the energy stays high with NASCAR-themed games like Hall of Fame or Hall of Shame and Driver Number Match, where bragging rights and big prizes are on the line. On the way in, fans can check out a 704 Honda Club car meet-up in the Fan Zone, featuring custom rides of all makes and models, making the perfect pit stop for any car enthusiast.

Fans rocking NASCAR gear will get $5 OFF their ticket at the gate. Adding to the excitement, one lucky fan will take home FOUR tickets and track passes to Charlotte Motor Speedway’s fall playoff showdown, the Bank of America ROVAL™ 400 on Sunday, Oct. 5.

ABOUT COOK OUT SUMMER SHOOTOUT:

Celebrating its 32nd season, the Cook Out Summer Shootout is a 10-race showcase of speed, featuring eight racing divisions of Legend Cars and Bandoleros. Races are held each Tuesday night under the lights with championship points on the line all summer long.

TICKETS:

Tickets are just $10; kids 12 and under get in FREE. Fans who bring a canned food donation will receive $2 off admission as part of Blue Cross NC’s “Drive Out Hunger” initiative. For tickets, schedules and more details about all the happenings at Charlotte Motor Speedway, visit www.charlottemotorspeedway.com/tickets.

KEEP TRACK:

Follow all the thrilling Cook Out Summer Shootout action at Charlotte Motor Speedway on X, Facebook and Instagram..

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Last year, the 36-race NASCAR Cup schedule was officially announced on August 29th. This year, series officials hope to unveil it sooner than that, but there are a lot of moving parts. A recent report from The Athletic claims NASCAR is close to a deal to run on the streets of San Diego, while recent comments from Carson Hocevar on a Twitch stream gave credence to pre-existing rumors of a return to Chicagoland Speedway.

What we know

Homestead-Miami Speedway

Photo by: Chris Graythen – Getty Images

So, let’s start with what we know. Homestead-Miami Speedway will return as the season finale in 2026. While not points races, North Wilkesboro will again host the All-Star Race while ‘The Clash’ remains at Bowman Gray. There were discussions about moving the pre-season exhibition to Brazil that didn’t end up going anywhere, but NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps is still hopeful of hosting an event in the country one day.

The Daytona 500 will again open the season with the event scheduled for Sunday, February 15th. Other crown jewels including the Coke 600 and Southern 500 will remain in their usual spots on Memorial Day Weekend and Labor Day Weekend, respectively.

Potential locations

Nascar Cup full field

Photo by: Chris Graythen – Getty Images

But the big news is about what might happen. Chicagoland’s potential return would likely signal the end of the Chicago Street Course race after three years there. NASCAR has stated how they want to try other unique and new street courses, so the loss of the Chicago Street Course could certainly open the door for this rumored street course race in San Diego.

The addition of San Diego would also finally bring NASCAR back to California after the destruction of Auto Club Speedway. The series’ plans for turning the beloved two-mile speedway into a short track after selling off most of the land appear to be a standstill, leaving them to explore other options. The street course race would likely be slotted in during the earlier portion of the year, similar to Fontana’s old date.

In another surprising development, NASCAR is actively looking at another potential location for a street course in Philadelphia. This is not far from Pocono, which already lost one of its dates on the schedule, but the ‘Tricky Triangle’ has been bringing in a solid crowd with that lone race weekend. NASCAR president Steve O’Donnell told the Pocono Record that they have looked at Franklin Field, but it’s not clear when (if ever) this event could happen. 

Another big question surrounds Mexico City. The event was well-received despite the travel issues, but there is no deal in place yet for 2026. NASCAR’s Ben Kennedy would not commit to it, but he and other officials expressed enthusiasm over the location. However, if Mexico City returns, it certainly can’t happen directly between two races in the Northern United States.

There’s also the question of the playoff format. Rumour is, it could be adjusted ahead of next season, which would certainly influence how NASCAR puts together the final ten races. As of now, this is about all we know as NASCAR continues to piece together one of the longest schedules in sports.

What’s Happening?

NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell recently expressed the sport’s interest in racing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, prior to this weekend’s race at Pocono Raceway.

• The rumor mill for future NASCAR race locations continues to spin out of control. Now, NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell points to the City of Brotherly Love as a potential target for a future NASCAR race.  
• In an interview with Mason Smith of the Pocono Record, O’Donnell claimed that the spot has not only thought about racing in Philadelphia but has looked into it. “Pocono has delivered for us in terms of fans, but when you look at opportunities, one of the places we looked was Franklin Field,” O’Donnell said.
• This is interesting, as some expect this to be a similar race to that of the Chicago Street Circuit rather than a stadium race. Rather than that, Franklin Field is the home of the Ivy League’s Penn Quakers; built in 1922, the stadium is the nation’s oldest active college football stadium.
• The field is similar to the LA Coliseum and Bowman Gray Stadium, both of which have recently hosted NASCAR’s preseason Clash. However, O’Donnell did not mention when or if this race will happen, saying they are “pretty early” in exploration.
• This is the latest story in a saga of future schedule news that has included rumors of a potential return to Chicagoland and the addition of a new street race in San Diego next season. All news and rumors on the 2026 NASCAR schedule can be found via the story linked above.

What do you think about this? Let us know your opinion on Discord or X. Don’t forget that you can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

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As the laps wound down in this month’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway, the big question was which drivers had enough fuel to make it to the finish line.

In the past, fans at home would have been flying blind. Viewers might understand drivers were trying to save fuel, but there was no way to tell if they were actually conserving enough gas — and to what degree.

Enter a new innovation used on Prime Video’s NASCAR broadcasts: The “Burn Bar,” an AI tool that measures fuel usage across every car in the field.

At Michigan, fans were looped in and could see how drivers like Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson were preserving their remaining gas to make it to the finish line. Prime not only showed how much they were using, but provided an estimated miles per gallon on its graphic in the process.

“I look at fuel as the score,” said Steve Letarte, the former crew chief turned TV analyst who helped brainstorm the Burn Bar concept with Prime. “How much fuel someone has or how much they’re using can determine the outcome, and this allows us to display it for the fan.”

NASCAR teams use data to calculate fuel mileage, but every manufacturer currently has a slightly different recipe to calculate fuel usage, Letarte said. It involves an equation that takes into account throttle position (how far the pedal is pushed down), engine performance, RPM and gear rate.

Prime’s calculation is a “light version” of that, Letarte said, because TV doesn’t need to be as exact as the teams. What matters is showing the viewer what’s happening to “alert the fans of the story of the race,” Letarte said.

And Prime’s tool has another twist: It can see every car in the field at once, whereas most teams are most concerned with tracking their own cars.

The origins of the Burn Bar trace back 18 months to a day at JR Motorsports, when the future Prime Video booth was watching a NASCAR race together and talking about race coverage in general. Alex Strand, Prime’s senior coordinating producer, said the conversation turned to topics like what was missing from NASCAR broadcasts and what fans would want that they aren’t currently getting.

Tracking fuel usage came up at the time, and then again when Prime started asking the teams what they thought was missing.

“That’s when we said, ‘All right, Steve, let’s talk fuel,’” Strand said. “And then we got in the lab, and this is where we ended up.”

The tool works similarly to other forms of AI. Prime gives it the starting parameters, and then it uses machine learning in Stage 1 to take stock of what is happening throughout the field — every lap and every input for each driver to create a measurement.

By the start of Stage 2, Prime is comfortable enough that the Burn Bar is ready for display with a more accurate measurement than if it had just been displayed from the green flag.

Fuel strategy is of the utmost importance in Michigan @SteveLetarte goes in-depth on the AI-powered Burn Bar. #NASCARonPrime pic.twitter.com/bE7XohwoK3

— Sports on Prime (@SportsonPrime) June 8, 2025

The tool’s roots are in the innovation Prime made for its “Thursday Night Football” coverage, when the broadcaster came up with “Defensive Alerts” — the groundbreaking form of AI that predicts blitzes before the ball is snapped. On TNF, the AI tool circles a potential player who is likely to rush the quarterback based on a proprietary model.

“We asked ourselves a question about, ‘What if we could predict a blitz?’” Strand said. “And then these scientists who are on our team in Tel Aviv said, ‘We can do that.’ We’re like, ‘Really?’

“Then the real macro message was, ‘You can kind of do anything. It’s just a matter of what are the data inputs.’”

It took approximately a year to develop the Burn Bar tool, and Letarte said the reaction from teams in the garage has been “shocked.” After all, he said, it’s not like there are thousands of people in the world who work on something this specific.

“The fact we could take something that’s pretty complicated in a real specialized field and present it to these scientists and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, here’s your answer’ — I think that opens the garage’s eyes,” Letarte said. “Like, ‘Wow, they solved that problem relatively quickly.’”

Even now, the Burn Bar could be just a start. With TNF, Defensive Alerts served as a jumping-off point for further viewer enhancements (such as “Defensive Vulnerability” and “Coverage ID”).

Prime already has a new AI tool that analyzes all radio communications from all teams for the entire race and surfaces interesting radio chatter based on certain categories (car performance, emotion, etc.). Producers in Los Angeles then use the tool to edit Prime’s version of Fox Sports’ “Radioactive” feature — a recap of interesting team communications — that airs during the postrace show.

A screenshot of the Burn Bar during the Nashville race on June 1. (Courtesy of Prime)

Letarte, an analyst for three of NASCAR’s four Cup Series network partners this season, said as much as he values the announcing element of broadcasts, “all sports should be really entertaining on mute.”

In other words, he said, TV should tell the story to someone who is watching a game or a race with no volume, which makes tools like the Burn Bar and its fuel usage display all the more valuable.

“It’s not just, ‘What can we measure, but how are we going to show it?’” Letarte said. “If you walk in a bar, by the end of your first beer, you should have a pretty good idea of what’s going on in the event. That has to tell its own story.”

Said Strand: “We want (fans) to know more, and we think they can. What we’ve seen with things like this and stuff on our NFL (coverage) is they have an appetite for it, and we think we’ve got the ability to present it in a simple way. So it’s been pretty neat.”

(Top photo of a screenshot showing the Burn Bar from Prime’s NASCAR coverage: Courtesy of Prime)

NASCAR Driver Reports Bizarre Problem During Race originally appeared on Men’s Fitness.

Katherine Legge faced an unexpected challenge at the NASCAR Cup Series race in Mexico City last weekend.

Legge is a British racing driver with over 25 years of experience. She has competed in the IndyCar Series, DTM, IMSA, and Formula E, and made history in 2005 by becoming the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in North America.

During last weekend’s race, she was just outside the top-20 when an unusual racing incident struck: her pedal became stuck to her foot.

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Typically, when you hear about racing mishaps, it’s along the lines of a driver clipping the wall, getting caught in a multi-car pileup, missing a crucial pit stop, or suffering a tire blowout at the worst possible moment. That wasn’t the case for Legge.

According to what she said on the on-board radio, her pedal was “literally, welded onto her foot.”

Legge was running just outside the top 20 when she disclosed the pedal incident. The 44-year-old was in only her second NASCAR Cup Series race.

Earlier this season, she raced at Phoenix, finishing 30th. She’s the first woman to compete in a Cup Series race since Danica Patrick in the 2018 Daytona 500.

The crew suspected that heat from the engine caused the rubber sole of Legge’s shoe to melt onto the pedal.

No further details were shared about the incident, so it’s unknown how severe the issue was or how exactly it was resolved.

Luckily, Legge managed to keep driving and ultimately finished the race.

Related: Shohei Ohtani Turns Heads With Dodgers Pitching Debut

NASCAR Driver Reports Bizarre Problem During Race first appeared on Men’s Fitness on Jun 18, 2025

This story was originally reported by Men’s Fitness on Jun 18, 2025, where it first appeared.