Cup Series

By Staff Writer Andy DeLay For the first time in a long time, NASCAR felt alive again at Charlotte. Not manufactured alive. Not TV-camera-angle alive. Not “let’s hide the empty sections with different colored seats” alive. Real alive. The kind of alive where you look across the grandstands and see people. Families. Flags. Old-school race fans. New fans. Folks who came to watch stock cars, hear engines, honor the fallen, and feel like NASCAR still belongs to them. Charlotte Mo

When the checkered flag waved at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday, Chris Buescher once again delivered a result that has become his trademark: steady, efficient, and easy to overlook at first glance. Driving for RFK Racing, Buescher secured a fifth-place finish—his second top-five of the 2026 season. While that number may not jump off the page, the momentum behind it certainly should. The result followed a runner-up finish at Talladega Superspeedway the week prior, marking back