Ryan Sieg finds momentum after Atlanta top 10: ‘We’re gaining on it each week’

HAMPTON, Ga. -- Ryan Sieg carried high hopes for making his first NASCAR Xfinity Series victory a hometown one, aided by an unlikely ally. Instead, he settled last weekend for another top-10 finish and a building block in the momentum of his small family team. Sieg finished 10th in Saturday's Nalley Cars 250, fading slightly in the final overtime at Atlanta Motor Speedway. He had led six laps near the end before Ty Gibbs -- whom he sparred with two weeks ago at Las Vegas Motor Speedway -- bypassed him on the final circuit for his second win of the year. RELATED: Xfinity Series standings | At-track photos: Atlanta Before the final pass, Gibbs -- in an instance of turnabout -- had actually helped to push Sieg's RSS Racing No. 39 Ford out front in the aerodynamic draft. Once the white flag was unfurled, there was only so much holding-off that Sieg could do. [caption id="attachment_345808" align="alignright" width="300"] Zack Albert | NASCAR Digital Media[/caption] "It was incredible," said Sieg, who is in his ninth full season of Xfinity competition. "I was thinking about winning, and we had a really good shot and Gibbs pushed us up there, but when you get so far out there, I was trying to keep everybody behind me. ... But to do it here in Atlanta, we had a shot and we're gaining on it each week. Our program is still learning, so it's a gain all the time for us." Sieg claims the Atlanta suburb of Tucker, Georgia, as his hometown, and it's a 40-plus-mile drive to the 1.54-track just south of the metro area. So for fellow Georgia native and No. 39 crew chief Kevin "Cowboy" Starland, Saturday's race also became a point of emphasis -- both for the proximity to home and the chance to make progress on a superspeedway-style layout. "We just had to get ourselves in position," Starland told NASCAR.com. "I mean, we're in our backyard, so we wanted to put a lot of effort into this race and Stewart-Haas did a lot of effort in doing it for us, also. We're a small team. They don't like us really being up there sometimes and nobody really wants to work with us, so it typically happens to us on superspeedways. They'll split us, put us in the middle. "I thought Ty was gonna maybe help us out there after the Vegas deal and help us get there, but I mean, it's racing. Everybody's racing for the win, so you can't really blame him for going for it. We put ourselves in a position to win, and that's all we could ask for." Sieg leaves Atlanta with his third top-10 finish in five races this season, the 36th-place crash-out at Vegas being the lone blight on his 2022 record. The 34-year-old driver has been steady so far, but Saturday marked his closest brush with a breakthrough. "All in all, great for our team," said Sieg, who sits 10th in the Xfinity standings. "We're a small team, and still we've made gains on it, but we're still lacking a little bit. It's just so tough. Everybody's on it all the time, but to gain on it each week, we're moving in the right direction, and we'll get there. We come back here later in the year, and we'll make it better and hopefully find ourselves in Victory Lane."