Opportunity & Unkowns For Cup Series Racers At Nashville

NASHVILLE — With only four previous NASCAR Cup Series races at the 1.33-mile Nashville Superspeedway, Sunday night’s primetime Cracker Barrel 400 presents a lot of unknowns and a lot of opportunity.

Last year’s Nashville race featured the most overtime finishes in series history – an extra 31 laps – with Team Penske’s Joey Logano coming out on top after a fifth overtime period. It marked the first race win of the season for Logano, who would go on to claim his third NASCAR Cup Series championship.

The 2025 regular season officially reached the half-way mark at Charlotte last week, where Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain claimed his – and the team’s – first trophy of the season in a historic run from last place on the starting grid. The 32-year-old Floridian is also a former winner at Nashville (2023) and has top-five finishes in three of his four starts at the track, which bodes well for Chastain, personally, and the team, generally.

“The track is very unique,” said Chastain, who pilots the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. “It feels like it’s a mile-and-a-half [track] but it’s not, so it takes me some time to get acclimated. But I’ve had fast cars there to be honest. If my cars aren’t good, I can’t go fast. We’ll look to build off of things we’ve learned more recently about these cars and try to keep moving the needle.”

Although Chastain was runner-up at Texas three weeks ago, consistency has been something the Trackhouse Racing team is still procuring as a perennial NASCAR Cup Series championship-level organization. And a good showing in the team’s Nashville headquarters this weekend would go a long way.

The first Trackhouse hire, veteran Daniel Suarez earned two of his 2025 season’s three top-10 finishes in the last five races but has suffered through adversity (often not of his own doing) with three other finishes of 33rd or worse in that stretch. His lone top-10 in four Nashville races came in 2021.

Shane Van Gisbergen, who is competing in his first full NASCAR Cup Series season in the No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet, has a single top-10 – at the Circuit of The Americas road course. The former Australian Supercars champion is, however, coming off his best finish (14th at Charlotte) in the 10 races since COTA. He finished 15th at Nashville in last year’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race there.

Of note, Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson is the only driver with top-10 finishes in all four Nashville races, with a win in 2021 and an average finish of 4.5 at the track.

Conversely, in the four previous Nashville races, the powerhouse Joe Gibbs Racing team only has two top-five finishes combined among its four drivers. Last year, the team led 203 of the 331 laps but did not come away with a single top-10.

This season, the race winner has led 10 laps or less seven times – including four of the last six races heading to Nashville.

Championship leader, Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron has two top-10 finishes in four Nashville races and two others of 19th or worse. He’s led a total of five laps (all in 2023) and finished 19th last year.