2026 Anduril 250 Predictions

Coronado. The Cup Series makes history this weekend as it heads west for the 2026 Anduril 250 (Race the Base) at Naval Base Coronado, the first NASCAR national series race ever held on an active, U.S. military base. The new circuit is a temporary 3.4 mile, 16-turn street course carved out of runways, roads, and tarmac at Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado, California, that overlooks the San Diego Bay. The views for the entire weekend have been nothing short of breathtaking. The track itself is the longest on the entire 2026 schedule. Drivers exit the Ellyson Start/Finish Line (named for Navy Aviator Number One, Commander Theodore Ellyson) and immediately face two quick left-handers, before working through a corner aptly named Carrier Corner. The course has a lot of character to it. Connor Zilisch’s tweet on X (Formerly Twitter) says it all: “Craziest most unique track ever… New asphalt in some places, ice rink in others. Tire fall off… gonna be fun!” Dale Jr. and Steve Letarte will be calling the race from the bridge of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier. This whole weekend doubles as a celebration of the Navy’s 250 anniversary and marks NASCAR’s first point-paying race in Southern California since early 2023. This figures to be one of the most memorable races in NASCAR history. 

Friday’s opening practice was pure chaos. Austin Cindric spun, Brad Keselowski nosed the tire barrier, and ol’ seven-time, Jimmie Johnson, somehow kept a full 360-degree spin off the wall. Pit strategy will matter enormously on a course nobody has raced before. Given how quickly the asphalt is chewing up sets of tires, there will be plenty of options and comers and goers all race long. There’s no race history to lean on here. This may be a wide-open Cup event. 

Coverage of the Anduril 250 (Race the Base) can be seen on Amazon Prime Video, with the green flag scheduled shortly after 4 PM EST on Sunday.

Driver to Fade:

Kevin Magnussen is set to make his NASCAR Cup Series debut today, piloting Trackhouse’s Project 91 entry, the same part-time international ride that launched Shane van Gisbergen’s career with a win on debut in 2023. Magnussen, though, isn’t walking into the same situation. Where van Gisbergen arrived from Australian Supercars, a discipline NASCAR people consider a close cousin of the Next Gen car, Magnussen is a career open-wheel racer with 185 Formula 1 starts and almost no stock car background. He’s been honest about the gap: he said he tries not to use van Gisbergen’s debut as a benchmark for his own. Magnussen has barely sat in a stock car before this weekend, leaning mostly on iRacing laps, and admitted he’s essentially trying to cram decades of other drivers’ experience into a single, 50-minute practice session.

History isn’t on his side, either. He’s the latest in a growing line of former F1 drivers to try NASCAR’s Next Gen car, following Daniil Kvyat (three starts, a best finish of 36th at both the Indianapolis Road Course and Watkins Glen) and Kimi Raikkonen, who finished 37th in his Cup debut at Watkins Glen in 2022 driving this same No. 91 entry. The early signs from San Diego aren’t encouraging. Magnussen made wall contact twice during Friday’s practice and ended up 29th on the speed chart, more than two seconds off Kyle Larson’s pace. He found a bit more pace out of the car for 21st in qualifying, but there is something to be said about not knowing how to drive around aggressive NASCAR drivers. Between the inexperience, the unfamiliar equipment, and a track that’s already eaten several veterans alive in practice alone, expect a long, humbling day for Magnussen, and a finish outside the top 25.

Dark Horse:

This entire season has been reshaped by tragedy for Richard Childress Racing. Kyle Busch passed away on May 21 after a sudden illness, and Austin Hill has since taken over Cup Series duties, with Busch’s charter and owner points folded into the No. 33 effort that Hill already split time in. Richard Childress has made clear Hill is in the car for the rest of the year. The timing of that transition matters here: the last road course the team raced was Watkins Glen in May, where Busch, in what turned out to be one of his final starts, drove to an eighth-place finish, his season-best, while teammate Austin Dillon ran fourth in Stage 2 en route to sixth, RCR’s first time putting two cars in the top 10 since the Chicago Street Race. That’s real, recent road-course momentum for an organization now trying to carry it forward without its driver.

Hill was ninth-fastest in Friday’s practice and second only to van Gisbergen on five-lap average pace, ahead of names like Michael McDowell and Ty Gibbs. Stage points and a clean, mistake-free run feel like the realistic ceiling for him sliding into this car. Given the pace early on, a top 15 finish is well within range for the No. 33 team.

Top 10:

It’s been an education, not a coronation, for Connor Zilisch’s rookie Cup Series season. After dominating in the former Xfinity Series a year ago, Zilisch has spent 2026 mired near the back of the points standings with Trackhouse. He has openly admitted on Dale Jr. Download that he expected exactly this kind of reckoning once he stepped up and called it a different level entirely from what he’d raced before. He has shown flashes of promise at road courses this season: COTA in March, where Zilisch started 25th, got spun by Daniel Suárez in Turn 1 early, fought all the way back into the top five running some of the race’s fastest laps, then got collected again in the same corner on a late restart and salvaged only a 14th-place finish. He called it one of the best races he’d ever driven, but was frustrated because the finishing position did not match the speed in the car.

That speed looks to be trending the right way again entering San Diego. Zilisch was fourth-fastest in Friday’s opening practice, the highest-placing Trackhouse car not named van Gisbergen and showed some speed in qualifying as well. If Zilisch can simply stay out of exactly that kind of trouble he faced in COTA, the natural road-course talent that made him stand out that much more in Xfinity last year should be enough to finally produce the clean day that’s eluded him all year. Pencil him in for a top 10 run, exercising the demons that have plagued him recently. 

Winner:

At this point, betting against Shane van Gisbergen at a road or street course feels less like an underdog pick and more like a denial of reality. Van Gisbergen even pushed back recently on being labeled the automatic favorite, saying it disrespects the level of competition he’s racing against. The numbers say otherwise. Entering Sunday, van Gisbergen has seven career Cup victories on road and street courses, trailing only Tony Stewart (eight) and the record holder, Jeff Gordon (nine), and he’s done it at a staggering clip, winning roughly half of his non-oval Cup starts since his 2023 debut. A win at Coronado would extend his current active road-course winning streak to two. Something to remember is that SVG’s first-ever Cup start came in an unfamiliar car at an unfamiliar track, the Chicago Street Race, and he won it anyway. A brand-new, bumpy, military street circuit is exactly the kind SVG adapts and thrives faster at than the rest.

SVG sits in a precarious position in the regular season championship standings, sitting on the bubble to make the Chase. He has had a rough go of it in the past couple of weeks with wrecks and low finishes plaguing him. While SVG is getting better at oval tracks, make no mistake about it, this stretch of back-to-back road courses is enormous for his postseason hopes. There is no question he will be at the front, contending for both stage points and the win. Expect Shane van Gisbergen to make history of his own, tying Tony Stewart on the all-time road course wins list with a victory in the Anduril 250 (Race the Base). The most pressing question I have is if he has enough leg to kick the rugby ball, which has now become his signature celebration, into the San Diego Bay.