NASCAR driver says quiet part out loud about Sophie Cunningham, the WNBA looks even worse & car goes airborne!

Monday Morning Pit-Stop is a weekly NASCAR column that runs on OutKick.com and Fox News Digital. If you’re looking for a normal NASCAR recap, go check out insufferable ESPN … assuming they still know NASCAR exists.

Stop the presses! Breaking news out of the NASCAR world …

Everyone in and around garage agrees with Sophie Cunningham’s perfectly sane opinion that men should stay out of women’s locker rooms.

I know. Shocking stuff. Jarring. Who would’ve thought that a sport built in the south by hard-working, God-fearin,’ blue collar patriots would side with Sophie Cunningham on the whole transgender in women’s sports issue.

SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM SPARKS SOCIAL MEDIA MELTDOWN BY SPEAKING OUT TO PROTECT WOMEN’S SPORTS

Perhaps the insufferable WNBA should take notes. Just a thought.

Yes, we’re gonna get into Sophie’s big day at the race over the weekend. She was the star of the show. She was everywhere. With everyone. Doing anything, and everything.

Second NASCAR race in the last 12 months for her, too. She said last time these were “her people.” I would assume that’s why she came back.

You’ll see.

What else? I’ve got Kyle Larson breaking his losing streak in a big way, everyone (and I mean everyone) wrecked at Gateway, and Carson Hocevar vs. Brad Keselowski was a dud this week, but NASCAR of course had no problem promoting it.

Will they fine/suspend Brad after he inevitably wrecks Carson? Probably. But by God, they’re gonna make their money off of him first!

Fair? Foul? We’ll dive in.

Four tires, a splash of that Sunoco racin’ fuel, and maybe a few more tow-trucks for Gateway because the others are WORN out after yesterday … Monday Morning Pit-Stop — the ‘We Love What You Stand For’ edition — is LIVE!

Sophie Cunningham has fans all over NASCAR

A couple things right off the top …

1. I have no clue if Sophie is actually a NASCAR fan or not. She’s been a correspondent for USA all WNBA season, making weekly cameos on their pregame shows, so I assume this what part of that obligation.
2. That being said, she’s also just really, really good at it. “You guys are salt of the earth people.” She knows her audience. She’s going to make so much more money once she’s done with WNBA.
3. She kicked footballs into the crowd with Kenny Wallace (Herm!). She hung out with Chase Elliott. And Austin Dillon. And Carson Hocevar (of course). She went to the driver’s meeting. She was in the pits. In the haulers. In the infield. She hung with Michael Jordan. She said hello to Jeff Gordon.

She was everywhere:

Austin Dillon says the obvious part out loud

See? Everywhere. While the WNBA girls were overseas winning a FIBA world cup that nobody in the country watched because it was played at 2 p.m. on an NFL Sunday (amazingly stupid), Sophie Cunningham was back here in the states hanging out in the Cup garage before a race at Gateway.

Choose your fighter, America. Woman of the people!

Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever attends the drivers meeting before the NASCAR Cup Series Enjoy Illinois 300 at WWT Raceway in Madison, Ill., on Sept. 13, 2026. (Getty Images)

Now, I saved one Sophie interaction in particular for its own spot, because it deserves a special look.

Cunningham also hung out with Austin Dillon, who gave her a huge bag of gifts on the way out. Shirts. Hats. Memorabilia. The works.

More importantly, he also told her exactly how the rest of the garage feels about her after she just spent an entire summer being attacked by the insufferable LIBS in the media — and on the court — because she simply said men don’t belong in little girls’ locker rooms.

“We’re huge fans. We love what you stand for. That’s the biggest thing.”

Couple things here …

• Austin Dillon — and Richard Childress Racing as a whole — is probably the most right-leaning team in a very right-leaning garage. President Donald Trump has a long relationship with Childress. So this take isn’t surprising at all. Refreshing? Absolutely. It’s nice to hear an athlete just say the truth for once. We’re all thinking it! Just say it. Thank you, Austin.

Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever poses for a photo with Riley Herbst, driver of the No. 35 FRE Nicotine Pouches Toyota, during the drivers meeting before the NASCAR Cup Series Enjoy Illinois 300 at WWT Raceway in Madison, Ill., on Sept. 13, 2026. (Getty Images)

• Notice that Amazon Prime’s official sports social media account shared that clip, in its entirety. They could have easily edited the last part out. They could have no shared it at all. But they did. I can assure you, that wasn’t an accident. Not in this hellish landscape.
• How nice was it for Sophie to be around sane people for once? She spent all summer getting beaten and battered by the horrible, jealous lefties in the WNBA, and then finally breaks free of them for a few weeks and gets to see what the sane part of the country looks and sounds like. What a breath of fresh air.

OK, enough Sophie talk. Let’s get to the actual racing …

Larson, Carson & cautions!

Kyle Larson won to snap a 51-race winless streak, which is actually stunning if you think about it. It wasn’t the long ago that Kyle Larson was winning every other week. And now we’re talking about snapping a 51-race winless streak.

His last win came in May 2025 at Kansas. Again, it seems impossible, but it’s true. As for yesterday in St. Louis, Larson didn’t so much win as he did survive.

Kyle Larson, driver of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet, celebrates with his crew after winning the NASCAR Cup Series Enjoy Illinois 300 at WWT Raceway in Madison, Ill., on Sept. 13, 2026. (Getty Images)

This was one of those “last man standing” races that you usually see at Daytona or Talladega. Anyone care to guess how many cautions they finished with?

Anyone?

Eighteen. 18!

While all of them were special, No. 16 was probably my favorite:

The all-time Cup Series record for cautions in a race is 22 at the infamous 2005 Coca-Cola 600. We fell just a few short yesterday. Oh well.

There’s always next week!

Next? Alex Bowman came in second yesterday, which was nice to see given Bowman’s been horrible this season. Just horrible. But he was fast at Gateway, and had a real shot at the end.

The post-race interview was … something:

My God.

I’m gonna go ahead and present that without comment. Trust me, it’s better this way.

I will say this … “We love our fur babies, don’t we? And when we lose them, it is tough. Was he on your mind, and were you racing for him today?” is maybe the most embarrassing line of questioning from a reporter I have ever heard.

What are we doing here? No, he wasn’t on his mind. He just sobbed through 45 seconds for no reason at all!

Lordy.

Next? On the way out, let’s check in with how NASCAR is viewing the ongoing Carson Hocevar-Brad Keselowski feud that started last week when Carson put Brad in the wall at Darlington:

Look, I know having a poster at the track isn’t NASCAR’s call. It’s the track’s call. In this case, it was a Gateway decision to heavily lean into the ongoing Keselowski-Hocevar feud.

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But … let’s not sit here and act like NASCAR couldn’t shut that down if they wanted to. They can. They did not. They let those posters fly, and pushed the Hocevar-Keselowski stuff on social media, and are, clearly, leaning into it.

And they should, by the way! Carson Hocevar is great for this sport. The garage needs a villain. Social media needs a star. Carson checks both boxes.

But it’s going to look so silly and hypocritical when Brad gets fined or suspended — or both — after he inevitably does what NASCAR is currently promoting him to do.

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By the way … I would assume Carson’s punishment is coming this Saturday night at Bristol. Don’t know if you’ve heard, but that place is historically used A LOT to air out dirty laundry. Just a hunch.

OK, that’s it for today. Good work, everyone. Long class.

Let’s end it with Jesse Love and girlfriend Georgia Kryssing enjoying a nice trip to the Bahamas before the Chase began. Can’t believe I missed this last week!

See y’all at Bristol.