NASCAR reveals top five Cup Series drivers in All-Star Race fan voting

NASCAR has released the names of the top five drivers in All-Star Race fan voting, with just days to go until cars hit the track at Dover.

Unlike in previous years, there will be no All-Star Open prior to the race to determine which of the non-guaranteed drivers makes the field for the main event – but the fan vote very much still matters.

Instead, there will be a Byzantine system in which all 36 full-time drivers will race a 75-lap stage, after which the top 26 will be reversed (so the 26th placed driver will start first, 25th will start second, etc.) and the 27th-36th placed drivers will remain in their finishing positions. That will kick off a second 75-lap run.

Finishing positions from each stage will be combined, and will be used to fill the 26-man field for the final 200-lap segment – the 'true' All-Star race.

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Wait, seriously, how does the NASCAR All-Star Race selection work?

Well, 19 of those 26 drivers have already been confirmed. Drivers who won a Cup Series race during the 2025 or '26 seasons, past All-Star Race winners who compete full-time in the Cup Series, and past Cup Series champions who currently compete full-time are all locked in.

Drivers 20-25 will be decided by the two 75-lap stages, while number 26 – we're finally there – will be the driver with the most fan votes among the remaining 11 non-qualifiers.

Does that make sense? It barely does to us. We'll get into it with a full explainer later in the week, we promise.

What you need to know is that as things stand, the All-Star Race fan vote top five are – in alphabetical, not vote, order – Alex Bowman, Chris Buescher, Noah Gragson, Ryan Preece and Connor Zilisch.

Bowman, likely a very popular vote this year after fighting back from vertigo-like symptoms which kept him out for a month, won the 2019 fan vote, while Gragson has swept it in the last three years.