Posted on by Reid Spencer

RELATED: Full race results | Standings | SHOP: Johnson gear

HAMPTON, Ga. — With wrecks erupting behind him, Jimmie Johnson took the checkered flag in overtime under caution in Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway — and then he remembered.
 
Almost lost in the euphoria of Johnson’s second straight victory at the 1.54-mile track was the realization that, with his 76th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory, he had tied the late Dale Earnhardt for seventh on the all-time wins list.
 
But as the No. 48 Chevrolet rolled around the track on its Victory Lap, heading in a clockwise direction a la Alan Kulwicki, the six-time champion thrust his arm out the driver’s side window with a three-finger salute to the crowd, acknowledging the bond he now shares with The Intimidator.

RELATED: Watch Johnson’s Victory Lap salute
 
“It’s such an honor,” Johnson said. “With the chaos at the end and the crash and wondering about overtime and how it worked these days, I kind of lost sight of that.
 
“I remembered it on my Victory Lap coming down, and I had to come by and throw a ‘3’ out the window to pay my respects to the man. There’s a huge void in my career that I never had a chance to race with him, but at least I was able to tie his record.”
 
Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran second to his teammate, followed by Kyle Busch, who started 39th after his qualifying time was disallowed because the rear toe of his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota exceeded NASCAR’s tolerances.
 
Polesitter Kurt Busch was fourth, and Carl Edwards came home fifth.
 
Johnson’s fifth victory at Atlanta probably wouldn’t have occurred had crew chief Chad Knaus not made a strategic call that wrested control of the race from Kevin Harvick, whose dominant No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet led a race-high 131 of the 330 laps.
 
As soon as Johnson hit the fuel window that would get him to the end of the race, Knaus brought the No. 48 Chevy to pit road for four tires and gas on Lap 276, nine laps before Harvick pitted from the lead. With the nine-lap advantage on fresh tires — not to mention issues with the left front tire that cost Harvick more than three seconds on pit road — Johnson was 13.631 seconds ahead of Harvick’s No. 4 when the green-flag pit stop cycle was completed on Lap 287.
 
“Definitely a gutsy call,” Johnson said. “It was just a great team effort. The No. 4 (Kevin Harvick) car was awfully tough and it was going to take some strategy to get by him. When he told me to whip it as hard as I could there (after the lap 276 pit stop), I just felt like I was going to take too much life out of the tires. But, it worked. And I got rolling around the top and got to where I got this Lowe’s Chevy in Victory Lane.”
 
But it wasn’t easy. Harvick cut into Johnson’s advantage, reducing it to 5.1 seconds before the speeds of the top two cars leveled out. When Ryan Newman blew a left rear tire and spun at the end of the frontstretch with two laps left in the regulation distance of 325 laps, the eight lead-lap cars came to pit road for tires.
 
Johnson held the lead, with Harvick second and Kyle Busch third. But on the overtime restart, Harvick had trouble in the outside lane and Johnson surged ahead, pursued by Kyle Busch and Earnhardt.
 
A wild wreck on the backstretch caused the caution that ended the race under yellow five laps beyond its scheduled distance.
 
“We had issues about the last three runs,” said Harvick, who suffered late-race brake problems and finished sixth. “I had to start driving the car different. It just required a little bit different handling. And then we had a slow pit stop there.
 
“We got way behind, and the No. 48 was way out front, and I had to drive the car really hard and got the right rear (tire) burned up. We just didn’t execute today, but everybody on our Jimmy John’s/Busch Chevrolet hung in there all day, and we’ll keep at it.”
 
Notes: Rookie Chase Elliott finished eighth in his first race experience with NASCAR’s 2016 lower-downforce rules package. … The race stayed green for the first 210 laps, a track record from the start of a Sprint Cup event. The caution that ended the race was the third of the afternoon. … After his second straight third-place finish, Kyle Busch leads the series standings by three points over Daytona 500 runner-up Martin Truex Jr. Harvick is third, four points behind Busch.

Posted on by Kathy Sheldon

RELATED: Smith talks Caution Clock

HAMPTON, Ga. — Time became a new factor in NASCAR for the first time on Saturday, with the Caution Clock coming into play twice in the Camping World Truck Series Great Clips 200.



The first competition yellow on Lap 38 caused issues for Christopher Bell in terms of tire strategy. The second competition caution as the 20-minute clock expired also was tied to issues for Bell, but under the surface, was playing into every team’s pit and tire strategy at Atlanta Motor Speedway.



NASCAR introduced the caution clock in 2016, starting at Daytona International Speedway. A 20-minute timer begins counting down at the beginning of each green-flag run. If no natural caution occurs before the clock runs out, a caution will come out, giving teams the opportunity to pit, change tires and make adjustments.

The Caution Clock yellow on Lap 38 came at exactly the wrong time for Bell, who was running second when a flat right front forced him to pit road on Lap 27.



The team got off tire strategy as the rest of the field capitalized on four fresh tires on the race’s first restart. The No. 4 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota team got back on sequence with the field when William Byron’s engine blew on Lap 60, bringing out the second caution of the race. He quickly moved back into the top five and was battling Matt Crafton for the lead by Lap 92.

The second Caution Clock yellow proved costly for Bell as well, but much more so for Matt Crafton and Daniel Suarez.



Bell overshot his pit stall with the setting sun in his eyes and had to be backed up, losing valuable time and falling to fifth place for the restart on Lap 111.



That put Bell behind Crafton and Daniel Suarez for the restart, and as Bell aggressively pushed to regain the lead, he made contact with his teammate’s No. 51 Tundra. That sparked a hard wreck that took out Crafton and Suarez, but Bell snuck through.



“We just had a tough day,” Suarez said after being released from the infield care center. “We had the fastest truck.”



MORE: Crafton, Suarez involved in big wreck at Atlanta



Bell’s luck ran out a few laps later as his right front tire went down, sending his Toyota hard into the outside wall.



Cameron Hayley was one of the drivers who got through that late wreck unscathed, and despite his own right front tire issues finished second.



Hayley said after the race that the Caution Clock affected all the teams Saturday, as it played heavily into tire strategy.



“It was definitely difficult. The tire was giving up really bad in the right front for a lot of us,” Haley explained, saying the No. 13 ThorSport Racing Toyota didn’t have a tire go down, but did have two right fronts wear all the way down to the cords.



“The thing with that Caution Clock was everyone was trying to make it to that Caution Clock, and today the tire just almost didn’t make it to those 20 minutes,” Hayley said. “So the challenge was we had to get there when we wanted to pit sooner.”

Posted on by Kathy Sheldon

RELATED: Full starting lineup

HAMPTON, Ga. — Engines fired early Saturday morning at Atlanta Motor Speedway, with NASCAR XFINITY Series qualifying starting at 8:35 a.m.


It’s cold (41 degrees) and bright — and fast, which helped get the adrenaline pumping, at least, as some drivers suggested moving the session back to at least 10 a.m. ET next time around. The Heads Up Georgia 250 starts at 1:30 p.m. ET Saturday (FS1, PRN, Sirius XM NASCAR Radio.)


“I’m awake now,” Ryan Reed said after laying down his first-round qualifying time. “Going 180 mph, 190 mph into Turn 1. But no, I’m not a morning person.”


Darrell Wallace Jr. made it into the second round of qualifying, apparently with one hand tied behind his back — or something like that.


“One eye is closed right now, you just can’t see it,” Wallace told FS1’s Jamie Little, his sunglasses preventing him from proving it.


Ryan Sieg may have had the toughest morning, with flashing lights in his rearview before he even reached the track (he was running late.) 


Sieg seemed to be none the worse for wear, qualifying eighth in the No. 39 RSS Racing Chevrolet for the afternoon XFINITY race. And he told reporters he got a warning — he wasn’t saying how fast he was going.

Posted on by Nascar

RELATED: Full race results | Updated series standings 


HAMPTON, Ga. — Erik Jones overcame an early-race stumble to finish third in Saturday’s Heads Up Georgia 250 NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.



The Joe Gibbs Racing driver, winner of the Camping World Truck Series title a year ago, was penalized for jumping the start of the race. The subsequent pass-through penalty dropped him to 39th in the 40-car field.



Thanks to an early caution that regrouped the field barely 10 laps into the 163-lap race, the loss of track position wasn’t as painful as it could have been. Jones made steady progress and was just outside the top five at the halfway point in the race.



With 40 laps remaining, he was third and maintained his position as teammate Kyle Busch and fellow Sprint Cup Series driver Kyle Larson battled for the win.



“I’d say I was disappointed and confused,” Jones said of the penalty. “I wasn’t really clear completely on the rule. The 18 (Busch) spun his tires; I tried to give it back but … you can’t beat the leader to the line on the initial start but you can on restarts. I forgot about that rule, honestly. … It was unfortunate, but it was a nice test for the team and a nice comeback.”



Busch shouldered the blame for the issue, saying contact from fellow JGR driver Daniel Suarez caused him to spin his tires, delaying his start and putting Jones ahead at the line.



“I could tell Jones was trying to check up and I was trying to get ahead of him so we didn’t have that problem,” Busch said. “He did all he could and did a good job of trying to rectify the situation but I hurt him more than he did anything wrong.”



Coming from the back wasn’t ideal, but it provided unexpected experiences for the 19-year-old rookie who was making just his second XFINITY Series start on the 1.54-mile track.



“It helped me learn a lot about the track,” Jones said. “I struggled a lot here last year and learned a ton today about where to, I guess, properly run around this place.”



Busch called Jones a “quick study” and said the youngster “learns on the fly, asks a lot of good questions and so that’s why he’s to the level that he is so far. He’s got nothing but the horizon left in front of him.”



The top-three finish was a solid rebound from last week’s season-opening event at Daytona International Speedway, where Jones finished 31st. He is now 11th in points. 

Posted on by Nascar

HAMPTON, Ga. — Cole Pearn and his Furniture Row Racing team didn’t have a lot of time to enjoy last Sunday’s runner-up finish in the Daytona 500.
 
The Denver, Colorado-based team was back in the shop bright and early on Monday, the crew chief for driver Martin Truex Jr. said, thrashing to get ready for this weekend’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway (1 p.m. FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR).
 
“I’d like to say it carried over more but we were right in at 6 a.m. Monday, back to work and we worked massively long days just getting ready to come here,” Pearn said Saturday at AMS. “I think it’s good for the guys, the fact that they put in all that hard work over the winter and then to see the results gives them that confirmation that it was worth it. So hopefully we can carry that same type of feel this weekend.”
 
Truex’s No. 78 Toyota finished beside, but not ahead of, Denny Hamlin in the season-opening race.
 
The single-car entity, owned by Barney Visser, has been equally fast this weekend at AMS, ending final practice second only to Hamlin. He was eighth in Friday’s opening session and qualified ninth for Sunday’s main event.
 
A lack of on-track time, a new rules package and warmer temperatures forecast for Sunday leave a lot of room for concern.
 
“It’s a bit of a question mark,” Pearn said. “I think a lot of guys are going to be fighting it pretty hard. It’s going to be a lot warmer; I think that’s a big question mark. The track will be slicker … definitely some question marks but more so because of the new package. I think that’s the bigger thing.
 
“We’ve made good gains. Didn’t change a whole lot and seemed to have good speed the whole time (in final practice). The long-run speed was good. I feel reasonable about it anyway.”
 
The team unloaded its backup entry as soon as Saturday’s final practice had concluded, placing it on another transporter and sending it back to the race shop.
 
Pearn said the backup car will be used during Thursday’s open test at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, leading into the weekend’s Sprint Cup race. A new car has been built for the race.
 
“We’re lean on parts,” he said of the team that lost two cars during Speedweeks in Daytona. “So getting it back a day and a half earlier really will just help them get all the data acquisition things on it, get it ready to go for Thursday.”
 
— A roof-flap violation during pre-qualifying inspection at Daytona kept Truex from posting a qualifying time and Pearn was placed on probation through the end of the year as a result.
 
“It was propped up too much,” he said. “(NASCAR) wanted to put (the car) back through templates before we adjusted it. We just didn’t have time to get back there and do that before we got back out.
 
“It’s kind of a new era so you just have to understand what’s going to happen. I would have like to have just knocked it down and seen what it would run.”

Posted on by Nascar

RELATED: Key moments in SHR’s history

HAMPTON, Ga. — The addition of Stewart-Haas Racing to Ford in 2017 will mean an increased workload for Roush Yates Engines, the company that supplies Ford power to teams in all three of NASCAR’s national series.
 
But it means much more than the 60 or so additional engines the supplier will have to produce, according to CEO Doug Yates.
 
“For us, that’s four more top-notch cars, opportunities to win races and championships,” Yates said Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. “But the work starts now because we’ve got to get ready for next year.”
 
SHR, which currently runs under the Chevrolet banner, fields four full-time Sprint Cup entries, with drivers Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch and Danica Patrick. Clint Bowyer will take over Tony Stewart‘s No. 14 car in 2017.

RELATED: Stewart makes surprise appearance at Atlanta
 
Yates, son of famed engine builder and former team owner Robert Yates, said his company currently has approximately 250 engines in its fleet for Sprint Cup teams.
 
“We’ll start building them up but next year, with four cars will mean about 60 more engines. … Today we build about 750 Cup, XFINITY and Truck engines a year. At our road race shop we build about 250 a year. Obviously we will have to add some people. We feel like we have a good process, we just have to add volume.”
 
The benefit, he said, is it will be “a good opportunity to allow us to bring on more resources for the R&D side, more testing, more engineers. Just add depth to every department. It’s exciting.
 
“When we brought on (Team) Penske several years ago, we were not as prepared as we wanted to be … there were a lot of long nights, a lot of stress. So we’re going to try to be ahead of that.”
 
Team Penske made the move from Dodge to Ford after the 2012 season. Dodge left NASCAR on a high note; Penske driver Brad Keselowski had just won the Sprint Cup title.
 
The following year, Keselowski finished 14th and teammate Joey Logano eighth in points.
 
“We’ve never been afraid to build a lot of engines,” Yates said. “My dad and I have been in the engine business our entire lives. That part’s really not a concern. But we’re here to win races and championships, and there’s a lot of responsibility and pressure that goes along with that.
 
“Roush Yates has been in business for 12 seasons now, this is our 13th. Between Cup, XFINITY, Truck and road races, we’ve won over 250 races. With Penske in three years we’ve won 48 races and 20 Cup races. But the last Cup championship we won was in 2004. So that’s really the emphasis on us is to go win championships and we feel like with teams like Penske and Stewart-Haas and Roush Fenway and Petty (Richard Petty Motorsports), we have a really good opportunity to do that.”
 
Yates has built winning engines for decades, following in his father’s footsteps. His can recall his first race-winning engine as if it had been built just last week.
 
“It was a huge moment,” he said. “It was the fall Charlotte race … with Davey Allison. That was the first one I built all the way through. That was just such an incredible feeling of accomplishment. It was like ‘This is just incredible.’ That was really special to me.”

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Full race results


During a Lap 111 restart, the No. 4 of Christopher Bell tipped the back of Kyle Busch Motorsports teammate Daniel Suarez‘s No. 51 entry, causing a chain reaction to bring out the caution at Atlanta Motor Speedway.


Suarez’s truck immediately got into race leader Matt Crafton‘s No. 88 Toyota, which immediately went spinning on the 1.54-mile track. 



NASCAR then brought out the red flag on Lap 112 while cleanup began.



Both Crafton’s and Suarez’s Toyotas were wheeled to the garage, done for the day with significant damage. Both drivers were evaluated and released from the infield care center.


Crafton and Suarez were ranked 30th and 31st, respectively, by the race’s end. Bell wound up 26th. 

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Full lineup

 

Matt Crafton won the Camping World Truck Series Keystone Light Pole Award on Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway and will lead the field to green to kick off the Great Clips 200 (4:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

 

Driving the No. 88 Toyota, the ThorSport Racing driver soared to the top of the leaderboard with a speed of 179.790 mph. The two-time Camping World Truck Series champion is also the defending race winner and the only previous winner in Saturday’s field.

 

John Wes Townley will start second to Crafton in his No. 05 Athenian Motorsports Chevrolet.

 

Christopher Bell, Grant Enfinger and Cameron Hayley complete the top five in the starting lineup. Enfinger led two of the three Truck Series practices on Friday.

 

Norm Benning, Timothy Viens, Ryan Ellis, Korbin Forrister and Jordan Anderson failed to qualify.

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Practice 2 results | Full lineup


Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin launched to the top of the leaderboard Saturday in final NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice at Atlanta Motor Speedway.


Hamlin pushed the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota to a fast lap of 188.450 mph on the 1.54-mile track in final preparation for Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 (1 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM). Hamlin holds the 12th starting spot for the 500-miler, the series’ second race of the season.


Martin Truex Jr., runner-up to Hamlin in last weekend’s Great American Race, was second-fastest on the leaderboard again. The driver of the Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota, an affiliate team to the Gibbs operation, registered a lap of 188.226 mph.


Defending race winner Jimmie Johnson piloted the Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 Chevrolet to the third-fastest speed (187.297 mph) in the 80-minute session. The remainder of the top five was filled with his Hendrick teammates — Dale Earnhardt Jr. (187.095) and rookie Chase Elliott (186.963), the Daytona 500 pole winner.


Defending Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch, whose fast time in Friday’s qualifying was disallowed because of a technical violation, clocked the sixth-fastest lap in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota. Kurt Busch, who inherited the first starting position in Friday’s Coors Light Pole Qualifying after his brother’s time was disallowed, was ninth-fastest in final practice.


Jamie McMurray, who will start second Sunday, brushed the frontstretch wall near the 15-minute mark of final practice, scraping the right-rear fender of his Chip Ganassi Racing No. 1 Chevrolet.


McMurray took blame for the accident, saying he had looked down to check lap times on his digital dashboard and lost track of the racing line. McMurray indicated in TV interviews that the team did not plan to deploy a reserve car.


McMurray was fastest in the category of best consecutive 10-lap average, running his first 10 laps at 181.480 mph. Ryan Newman, Johnson, Kurt Busch and Austin Dillon completed the top five.

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Starting lineup

Kyle Busch scooted to the Coors Light Pole Award in Saturday morning qualifying for the NASCAR XFINITY Series at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Busch, driving the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota, turned a fast lap of 185.499 mph in the final qualifying round on the 1.54-mile track. The pole position was Busch’s first of the season, fifth at Atlanta and 49th of his career on the XFINITY tour.

Erik Jones‘ No. 20 Toyota from the Gibbs stables will start second in Saturday’s Heads Up Georgia 250 (1:30 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1, PRN, SiriusXM) after posting a lap at 185.078 mph. Daniel Suarez logged a 185.022-mph lap to complete a 1-2-3 JGR sweep in the starting lineup for the series’ second race of the season.

Kyle Larson (184.689 mph) and Brennan Poole (183.333 mph), both in Chevrolets for HScott Motorsports with Chip Ganassi, rounded out the top five.

Sprint Cup regular Kevin Harvick, winner of the last three XFINITY races at Atlanta, qualified 10th in the JR Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet. Series points leader Elliott Sadler, Harvick’s JRM teammate, will start 16th in the No. 1 Chevy.

Jones was tops in the 10-minute second round of qualifying, just ahead of JGR teammate Busch. Ty Dillon, celebrating his 24th birthday Saturday, was the final driver to make the third and final round of qualifying, just a tick ahead of 13th-fastest Blake Koch. He improved to wind up sixth in the starting lineup.

Busch edged Harvick for the top spot in the opening 20-minute qualifying round. Ryan Preece was the final driver to make the 24-car cut after Round 1, just nipping Harrison Rhodes to advance. Chris Cockrum‘s stalled car at the 13:04 mark brought the session’s only stoppage.