By Roy J. Akers — www.skyviewsports.net
Watkins Glen is the 12th race of the NASCAR season and one race short of the halfway point of the regular season. Most people have figured out that it’s SVG vs. the World. Who is favored? Chase Elliott, Chris Buescher, and AJ Allmendinger, and Michael McDowell should be in the mix.
NASCAR Cup Series
Next Race: Go Bowling at The Glen // The Place: Watkins Glen International
Track Length: 2.45 Mile Asphalt Road Course
The Date: Sunday, May 10 // The Time: 3 p.m. ET
The Purse: $11,233,037 // TV: FS1, 1:30 p.m. ET
Radio: MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR (Channel 90)
Distance: 245 miles (100 Laps); Stage 1 (Ends on Lap 20),
Stage 2 (Ends on Lap 50), Final Stage (Ends on Lap 100)
NASCAR National Series – NCS/NOAPS/NCTSS
Reddick, Hamlin continue to lead points … After Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway, where they both earned top-five finishes, Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin continue atop the Cup Series points standings entering this weekend at Watkins Glen International. Reddick has been the points leader from the jump this season with his five-win historic start and currently holds a 109-point lead over Hamlin after finishing fourth on Sunday. Hamlin, who finished second at Texas, has one win, five top-fives and seven top-10s this season.
Bell eager to continue road course success … Christopher Bell has become one of the premier road course drivers in the Cup Series, as he looks to continue a strong finishing streak this weekend. The Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) driver has finished inside the top-five in the last four road course races, dating back to Sonoma Raceway last year, which includes a third-place result at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) back in March. At Watkins Glen International, Bell has four top-10s in five career starts entering the weekend.
Briscoe, Reddick return to favorable Watkins Glen … Chase Briscoe and Reddick have garnered success at Watkins Glen over the course of their Cup Series careers. Briscoe has three top-10s in five career starts around the New York road course, including two consecutive entering this weekend. Reddick has four top-10s in five career starts and returns to Watkins Glen after a ninth-place result last year.
Burton hopes for another strong Watkins Glen run … In just two starts in the O’Reilly Series at Watkins Glen, Harrison Burton has earned top-10s in both races. The Sam Hunt Racing driver came home 10th in last fall’s race, as well as earning a fifth-place result in 2021 when he competed for JGR.
Honeycutt sits atop points … Heading into this weekend at Watkins Glen, Kaden Honeycutt is the new points leader for the Truck Series. The TRICON Garage driver currently leads the standings by 14 points after finishing third at Texas last weekend. Honeycutt has had a strong start to 2026, which includes four top-fives, five top-10s and two pole positions in seven races. He will make his second career start at Watkins Glen this weekend. He’ll also run the ARCA Menards Series race, piloting the No. 17 Toyota Camry for Cook Racing Technologies.
| On the heels of its first tripleheader sweep of the 2026 NASCAR season, Chevrolet will carry that momentum to upstate New York as all three divisions will take on the left- and right-hand turns of Watkins Glen International for the sport’s second road course race of the season. Chevrolet sits as the winningest manufacturer across all three divisions at the historic 2.45-mile New York circuit with a combined 40 trips to victory lane across the NASCAR national ranks. Among those includes a pair of triumphs in the track’s most recent events for NASCAR’s top-two divisions with Team Chevy’s road course ringers, Shane van Gisbergen and Connor Zilisch, driving the manufacturer to its 23rd Cup Series win and 14th O’Reilly Auto Parts Series win last season. |
| NASCAR has shared an over 40-year history with Watkins Glen International, and throughout that tenure, the circuit has became the home to an elite list of “firsts” for the Bowtie brigade. When the circuit first opened its doors to host the NASCAR Cup Series for its inaugural event in 1957, it was Buck Baker that took the victory – ultimately delivering Chevrolet its first-ever road course win in NASCAR’s premier series. |
 Watkins Glen is also the site that made a pair of Team Chevy drivers first-time winners. Competing in his third full-time campaign with Hendrick Motorsports, Chase Elliott drove the No. 9 Chevrolet to victory lane at the circuit’s 2018 event to become a first-time winner in NASCAR’s premier series. The victory kickstarted what turned into a championship-earning career at NASCAR’s highest level with the driver now boasting a resume of one title (2020) and 22 all-time wins. |
 Following suit of his Team Chevy teammate, Connor Zilisch paid a visit to “The Glen” in 2024 to make his debut appearance in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Behind the wheel of a JR Motorsports-prepared Chevrolet, Zilisch led a race-high 45 laps en route to the victory to make the rising star just the seventh driver in series’ history to win in his first career start. Since then, the Mooresville, North Carolina, native has skyrocketed into a full-time career in NASCAR’s premier series. |
Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse, has been Ford Racing’s top finisher in each of the last two NASCAR Cup Series races, including last Sunday’s event at Texas Motor Speedway in which he was fifth. Buescher heads to Watkins Glen International this weekend only two years removed from his win at the historic facility. He spoke about getting back on the road and his hopes for Sunday’s race earlier this afternoon as part of a weekly Ford Racing media call.
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse – YOU SPENT A LOT OF TIME IN THE FORD SIMULATOR YEARS AGO WORKING ON ROAD COURSES. HOW MUCH HAS THAT HELPED BECAUSE YOU’VE BECOME ONE OF THE MOST CONSISTENT DRIVERS IN THOSE EVENTS? “That was a long time ago. I remember when the Ford simulator was pretty new and a lot of our veteran drivers weren’t really keen on spending much time over there yet, there was a lot of open windows. There were many eight hour sessions spent over there just across the street getting to know a lot of racetracks that I hadn’t been to before O’Reilly or Cup racing at the time. And then trying to figure out how to be better at the types of racetracks that we don’t get to see that often and that’s road courses for us. We’ve spent our fair share of time over in the simulator through the years. We just came from there this morning. We were over there for four or five hours to start the day with all three of our teams. We still use it pretty religiously to hone in on how to be better at these things and I’m excited to be heading into Watkins Glen. I would be a little bit more excited if it was drier, but that being said, we’re hoping for a nice window and maybe we can catch a little bit of a break along the way. It’s such a fun racetrack. I love that place. It was my first race and we’ve had success and won there with BuildSubmarines.com on board, so they’re with us again. Familiar colors would look good in a familiar place parked there in Victory Lane, so I’m ready to head up north.”
TEXAS WAS A SELLOUT LAST WEEK. WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THAT BECAUSE THERE WERE SOME ROUGH YEARS? “That’s a good question that I probably don’t have the most sophisticated answer for, but the racing at Texas has continued to improve. As we’ve seen time and time again with repaved racetracks, the first couple of years are just tough. There’s so much grip in one lane and just that lane that the racing takes a hit for a little period of time. It’s aged. I’m sure it has nothing to do with triple digit figures during the summer out there, but it’s aged enough now to where it’s moved around. We’ve got a couple of lanes to race in. We had three really good races out there, and I think the Trucks and the O’Reilly race put on a show and with those being entertaining it helped invite more people out for Sunday, and we had beautiful weather. We finally had a weekend in Texas that was not 98 or not 40 and it just made it to where it was nice to be at the racetrack to be able to put on that show on a nice weekend. On the other side of it, it’s a weekend that wasn’t the opening weekend of hunting season in Texas. That’s probably hurt us through the years as well, so no matter how you look at it, and I know that would have been the fall, but I think we had a handful of scenarios finally go our way, and I think the racing product has been steadily improving, and our mile-and-a-half racing in the series has definitely improved as well. It was really neat to walk off the stage for driver intros and see so many people in the seats and ready to go already. That was a much needed turn for Texas Motor Speedway. Like I said, I’m happy to see the hometown crowd show up.”
