2026 eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series | Qualifying midseason report | Feature #6

The 2026 eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Qualifying Series season is officially six races old, and with only 11 races on the calendar, that means that we’ve officially passed the halfway mark. There have been four races using the NASCAR Craftsman Truck, and two with the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series car. Over the next two races, they’ll remain in the O’Reilly car, but in the final three races, they’ll compete using the same car that will be utilized in the Championship Series section of the season, the NASCAR Cup Series Gen 7 machine.

Over 1,750 drivers have attempted at least one of the six races. The trucks at Daytona opened the season, and had the most participation of the group, with over 1,300 drivers sorted among 37 splits. Since then, the split count has dwindled, still with 14 of them in the most recent race with the O’Reilly cars at Auto Club, but it has stayed top heavy. The Strength of Field (SoF) has stayed about the same through the top-five splits, those five in particular containing a number of drivers you might find in a weekly NASCAR iRacing Series Top Split event.

The SoF is important, because based on that number, that is how many points are awarded throughout the running order. Lower splits with smaller SoF averages will not earn as many points, even for a win, which essentially locks off the top-30 by the end of the season to those top-five splits. Of course, attempting to make the top-30 by season’s end through running in Fifth Split means that those drivers will need to be nearly perfect, running up front week after week to maximize their points. However, just making Top Split means that those drivers don’t need to get wins and top-fives every week to earn the points to get into the top-30 by season’s end.

THE TOP DRIVERS FROM TOP SPLIT

After six races of data to work with, as it stands leaving Fontana, six of the top-10 in the standings are consistently racing in Top Split. Eddie Kerner didn’t race this week, so this will eventually be his drop week, but even with a week off, he sits near the top of the board. Seth Noell is more of a rare case, where he started the season in Second Split, made a single start in the Top Split at Rockingham, then hasn’t been above Second Split since.

From 11th to 20th in the standings, only five of those drivers are consistent Top Split competitors. Michael Cosey Jr was one of the many drivers making moves up the split order, as he started the year in Second Split and graduated to the Top Split from the second week onward. Tommy Gossett, like Noell, made a single start in Top Split this season at Phoenix, but after starting the season in second split, has returned in the past two weeks during the O’Reilly portion of the schedule.

In the group of drivers from 21st to 30th, only three drivers are Top Split caliber through the first six races. That short list now includes Daniel Faulkingham, who started the season with a Top Split victory at Daytona, but had technological issues in the most recent race at Auto Club. That list also includes the most recent Top Split winner at Auto Club, Kenny Brady, who just squeaks into 30th entering the second half of the Qualifying Series season.

Andrew Navarro is the current points leader, but doesn’t have a win yet on the season. He’s gotten close on multiple occasions, including in the most recent event. The reason he leads the standings is due to the fact that he has five top-five finishes in six races, his only “poor” finish being a 17th at Phoenix, which is still a top-half of the field finish.

Sebastian Marin was leading the standings with three victories to his name, those including two truck wins and the first O’Reilly win at Homestead-Miami, but a mistake at Auto Club cost him the top spot for now. Garrett Manes is the other Top Split winner towards the top of the board, sitting in fourth after six races.

DRIVERS IN THE CONVERSATION OUTSIDE OF TOP SPLIT

While most of the attention is on those Top Split drivers, the Second Split has been a showcase of both emerging names and recognizable real-world talents. Noell grabbed a victory at Phoenix in Second Split. Another name on the board, two spots currently ahead of Noell in the top-30, is Dylan Basen. Basen, who claimed a Tournament victory in the eNASCAR College iRacing Series last year for Pasco-Hernando State College, was able to dominate at Homestead-Miami two Tuesdays ago.

On the flip side, four of the Second Split winners are currently not inside the top-30. One of those drivers is NASCAR Cup Series competitor Carson Hocevar, who won at Las Vegas, albeit in a bit of a controversial fashion. Regardless, Hocevar has competed in four of the six weeks, at one point flirting with the top-30 despite missing Daytona.

Hocevar, along with NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series regular Kaden Honeycutt and NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series regulars Parker Retzlaff and Rajah Caruth have all been seen at one point or another this season. Caruth, in particular, picked up a win in the Fourth Split action at Daytona to start the season. Honeycutt managed a third place run at Auto Club this past week. Retzlaff almost managed to sneak into Top Split that night that he raced at Homestead-Miami, instead earning the No. 1 car for the night in Second Split.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by eNASCAR (@enascar)

While it’s great to see the care and passion from real-world racing drivers, they aren’t the drivers that will make the top-30 by the end of the season. There are a ton of names that are making their case for a spot in the series, and one that I’ve been keeping tabs on is Tyler Latterell through the first six weeks. Latterell started his campaign with three podium finishes in Third Split. After moving up to Second Split, he collected a fourth and a seventh before his swagger wore off at Auto Club, seemingly running out of gas on the final lap in eNASCAR Overtime, where he was on pace for yet another top-10 finish at the worst.

Other drivers that have moved up from Third to Second Split include Jose Solis Jr, another College competitor for UCONN, who won a Third Split race at Rockingham before moving up, as well as Joe Armstrong, who took the checkers in the Las Vegas Third Split before moving up to Second Split. Aiden Bierlein was down in Fifth Split to start the year, claiming back-to-back wins at Daytona and Las Vegas before moving up the order. Bierlein now competes in Third Split, and has a foot in the door down in 29th after six events.

Ethan Eckert has a win this season, back at Daytona, but all the way down in Seventh Split. This most recent race week, he took part in Fourth Split, and sits 28th in the points so far.

NOTABLE NAMES OUTSIDE LOOKING IN

With five races still to go, these points are anything but set in stone. There are, in fact, over 1,750 drivers on the points standings, and considering a Top Split win to be around 400 points, there are about 30 to 60 drivers outside the top-30 that could potentially be right back in this thing with a win in the upcoming race week at Darlington.

The most notable in that range is the most decorated driver in eNASCAR history—”4-Time” Ray Alfalla. Alfalla, one of the two Coca-Cola backed trucks in the series season, hasn’t had the best luck, but on most weeks, he hasn’t had the most speed either. Granted, at Las Vegas, it was like a glimpse into the past, with Alfalla up front and dominant. That wound up going sideways when a caution flew in the middle of the race, trapping him a lap down during a pit cycle.

Alfalla is one of about a dozen or so drivers that have previously made starts in the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Championship Series in previous years that are just outside the mark, but could definitely make their way above it. A fill-in driver in years past, Michael Frisch sits the first man out in 31st. Right behind him is the most-recent Second Split winner, Jake Nichols, who ran in the series for multiple seasons, and sits just outside the mark by 10 points.

Timothy Holmes, who has had a resurgence in the eNASCAR College iRacing Series racing for Horry Georgetown Technical College, sits in 34th, currently clicking off solid runs in Third Split. Ryan Doucette and Matt Bussa find themselves in 52nd and 53rd, respectively. Blake McCandless jumped up to 63rd this week, while Brian Mercurio dropped down to 72nd. Just two years removed from a Championship 4 appearance, Graham Bowlin sits 80th in the standings.

These drivers all know what it’s like to compete at the top level, but either because of the safety net of the Contender Series disappearing, or because they are finding it more difficult to traverse the influx of talented drivers around them, or just because it hasn’t been their year, they all need to lock in over the next five weeks, starting immediately at Darlington, to even have a chance to join the Free Agency Pool at the beginning of May.

Outside of the previous Championship Series competitors, there are a number of College Series drivers hoping to make the next step. While some drivers like Matthew Morton (Ohio State), Basen, Solis Jr, Abraham Vela (Houston), Wyatt Tinsley (Minnesota Crookston), and Faulkingham (Maine at Machias) all find themselves above the cut currently, there are a number of them still on the outside, including Holmes, Ryan Andrew (DMACC), Chris Treppa (Lawrence Tech), Daniel Nanney (Ball State), Adam Garza (Triton), and Jonathan Evan (Western Connecticut), just to name a few between 31st and 51st.

There are two College Series drivers that are already locked into Free Agency—Michigan’s Matthew Zwack and Oklahoma’s Mario Merenda—who earned that right through their finish in the 2024-25 eNASCAR College iRacing Series final standings.

REMEMBER – DROP WEEK TO BE IN EFFECT

One last thing to consider in all of this is that when the final checkered flag flies in the last running split at Texas Motor Speedway next month, that there will be a little bit of math to do. A drop week is in effect in this Qualifying Series season, which means that everyone’s 10 best results will be counted towards their final score. If a driver only ran 10 out of the 11 races, or less, then all of their results will be counted and one of their missed weeks will be the drop. However, for any driver that competes in all 11 weeks, their worst result will be removed from their total points.

One way to think about it is that after the 10th race of the season at Michigan, every driver’s point total will be the least amount of points that they will have at season’s end. If they’ve run all 10 races to that point, their worst one will be placed in a holding cell. Should that driver either not race the Texas finale, or score less points than that selected point amount, their final points total will be what they entered Texas with. However, if a driver already missed a race, they’ll score points as normal. and if they beat their worst finish-to-date, they will swap out that bad race with this new better result.

As an example, with Marin’s 22nd place finish at Auto Club being his worst, should the season end now, that would be his drop, while the current points leader Navarro’s drop would be the 17th he scored at Phoenix. Working out that math would actually put Marin back ahead of Navarro in the standings at this time.

Thankfully, we’re not going to worry about calculating a drop until after the last race, so these are all just hypotheticals for now. However, these drops can either be mulligans or detriments, depending on how the rest of their season has gone. We’ll have to see how it all plays out following Texas.

Five races remain in the 2026 eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Qualifying Series season. After that, the 52-driver Free Agency pool will be finalized. In the next few eNASCAR Features, we’ll talk with even more of the drivers that are already locked into that pool, plus we’ll have coverage from the 2026 eNASCAR Media Day next week.

READ MORE:

FEATURE #1: Where are the Top Drivers from the 2025 season?
FEATURE #2: Revisiting the 2025 Championship 4
FEATURE #3: Former Champ 4 drivers looking to return in 2026
FEATURE #4: Top drivers aiming to push past just making Playoffs

For more information on the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series, visit eNASCAR.com or iRacing.com/eNASCAR.
For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit iRacing.com.­­

You may also like...

Recommended

eNASCAR College iRacing Series | University of Calgary, Connor Yeroschak nab third Tournament win in Old Dominion Classic

Recommended

iRacing Weekly Tune-in | eSports & Community Events | March 25th to April 1st, 2026

Recommended

2025-26 eNASCAR College iRacing Series | Old Dominion Classic | Week 2 Tournament Preview

Recommended

Kenny Brady steals eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Qualifying Series Top Split victory in Fontana