After the opening race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, here’s a quick look at the playoff picture as another opportunistic victory from a two-time champion highlighted Sunday’s thriller at Atlanta Motor Speedway while a pair of title hopefuls had days they’d like to forget as soon as possible.
WINNER
After a rocky regular season, Joey Logano delivered his second win of 2024 which automatically moves him into the Round of 12. With help from Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney on the overtime restart, the driver of the No. 22 Ford got the shoves he needed to stay out front and hold off Daniel Suárez, who was going for a sweep of the 2024 races at the 1.5-mile drafting track.
Daniel Suárez. It wasn’t a sweep of the year at Atlanta but a second-place result will do for the No. 99 Trackhouse Racing driver. Battling Logano on the outside of the front row of the OT restart, Suárez’s teammate Ross Chastain lost connection with him in Turn 3 with two laps to go, allowing the Penske pair of Logano and Blaney to hold serve to the finish. But leading nine laps and collecting seven stage points in the process, Suárez sits 21 points above the elimination line heading to Watkins Glen International, where he owns three top-five results in six career starts.
Alex Bowman. Sunday was a pivotal one for the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports driver. Bowman hung around in the top 10 all day, collecting 16 points after the first two stages and taking the checkered flag in fifth place. Bowman limped into the playoffs with five consecutive finishes outside the top 15 entering Atlanta but now holds a 27-point advantage going to Watkins Glen. He’ll need to rely on that gap as he’s yet to score a top 10 at the road course in seven starts.
WHO’S NOT?
Denny Hamlin. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weekend for Hamlin and the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team. After a miserable qualifying session Saturday resulted in a last-place starting spot, the team made a plug wire change prior to Sunday’s start. Expecting an attrition-filled 400 miles, Hamlin utilized the strategy of riding in the back of the pack to avoid the carnage, but the incidents were too few and far between for Hamlin to make up any ground. Instead, Hamlin was caught up in a final-lap incident along with playoff driver Harrison Burton. Hamlin was scored 24th at the finish and now sits just two points above the elimination line entering Watkins Glen.
Kyle Larson. The first twist of the 2024 postseason occurred near the end of Stage 1 as Larson’s No. 5 Chevrolet snapped loose in Turn 2, resulting in a hard collision into the outside SAFER barrier. Larson was then hit in the rear end by Southern 500 winner Chase Briscoe, bringing an end to the opener of the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing driver’s playoff campaign. Entering Sunday as the No. 1 seed in the playoffs, Larson dropped to 10th and holds just a 15-point cushion going to the middle race in the Round of 16 at Watkins Glen.
HAMPTON, Ga. — With a strong last-lap push from Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano rocketed into the Round of 12 of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs with an overtime victory in Sunday’s Quaker State 400 available at Walmart at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
In a two-lap shootout that sent the first playoff race of the 2024 season six laps past the posted distance of 260 laps, Logano had the lead by more than a car-length when NASCAR called a caution on the final circuit for a mid-pack wreck behind the leader.
The victory was Logano’s second at Atlanta, his second of the season and the 34th of his career. The driver of the No. 22 Ford vaulted to fifth in the playoff standings, but the win guaranteed him a spot in the next round.
“They just give me really fast cars on superspeedways, and we always find ourselves towards the front of them, (but) we just end up wrecking more times than not,” said Logano, who led twice for nine laps, a far cry from teammate Austin Cindric’s race-high 92.
“So, to be able to finally capitalize on a fast race car and win here in Atlanta again, I lived right over there in condo 805 for a long time (as a child racing Legend Cars), waking up dreaming of just racing on this race track.
“So, pulling into Victory Lane here is always a special one. We had such a really good team here today. It’s awesome to get (sponsor) Autotrader into Victory Lane, and the JL Kids Crew (one of Logano’s charitable enterprises) are here today, so it’s really cool to finally win with them here.”
When NASCAR called the caution on the final lap, February Atlanta winner Daniel Suárez was inches ahead of Blaney, the defending series champion. But with the third-place finish that entailed surviving a three-car wreck on Lap 205, Blaney took over the series lead by five points over Christopher Bell, who finished fourth.
After a strong, consistent run throughout the race, Alex Bowman finished fifth, as playoff drivers claimed nine of the top 10 positions.
The Lap 205 wreck Blaney survived proved the undoing of Martin Truex Jr. After repeated trips to pit road, Truex left the race 12 laps down and heads for next Sunday’s second playoff race at Watkins Glen International 15th in the standings, 18 points below the current cutoff for the Round of 12.
Suárez raced beside Logano on the first lap of overtime but lost his pusher when Trackhouse Racing teammate Ross Chastain washed up the track in Turn 3 and fell back.
“No, definitely not satisfied,” Suárez said of the second-place result. “I am happy with it, but not satisfied. I lost my pusher, my teammate. He was doing a great job, and I felt like we were going to have a great shot at it.
“Ross was doing an amazing job of pushing, and I don’t know if he got a flat tire or something, but once I lost him, I knew it was going to be tough. But that is part of racing, right?”
The race was incident-free for the first 55 laps, but on the 56th circuit, calamity struck top-seeded Kyle Larson and fellow playoff driver Chase Briscoe.
As cars at the front of the field were exiting Turn 2 on Lap 56, Larson’s No. 5 Chevrolet, running third, broke loose and shot into the outside wall at roughly 160 mph.
As the car rebounded off the SAFER barrier and slid sideways in the middle of the track, Briscoe’s Ford slammed into Larson’s Camaro, ripping the left front quarter panel off the No. 14 Mustang.
Both Larson and Briscoe exited the race, in 37th and 38th, respectively, and scored one point each for their efforts on Sunday.
“I’m OK,” Larson said after leaving the infield care center. “Thankfully, everything held up well inside the car. That was a huge hit. I’m not really sure what caused it.
“I was actually sort of tight and loaded in the corner. And then I was pretty far around the corner, and it just stepped out. I don’t know, it all just happened really fast.”
Briscoe, who earned his playoff spot with a victory a week earlier at Darlington Raceway, leaves Atlanta below the current cut line with a win-or-bust mentality.
“It was a big hit, one of the biggest hits I’ve had in a long time,” Briscoe said. “I’m glad I’m all right, and we just have to go win. That’s what we had to do at Darlington, and I know we’re capable of doing it again, so we’ll just have to go to Watkins Glen and Bristol and try to do the same.”
Larson leaves Atlanta in 10th place, 15 points above the current cut line for the Round of 12. Briscoe is 16th in the standings, 20 points on the wrong side of the equation.
Regular-season champion Tyler Reddick came home sixth, overcoming issues on pit road. Non-playoff driver Kyle Busch finished seventh after leading 24 laps in the final stage. Chase Elliott was eighth, followed by William Byron and Cindric.
Collected in the last-lap wreck, playoff driver Harrison Burton finished 31st and is 15 points behind Ty Gibbs, who finished 17th after leading 37 laps and is 12th in the standings. Brad Keselowski ran 19th and is tied with Gibbs.
Denny Hamlin ran at the back of the pack throughout the race and was collected in the last-lap wreck, finishing 24th. He heads for Watkins Glen 11th in the standings, a mere two points ahead of Keselowski.
Note: Inspection in the NASCAR Cup Series garage was completed without issue, confirming Logano as the race winner.
NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs drivers Kyle Larson and Chase Briscoe crashed out early in Sunday’s postseason opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Larson was running in third place through Turns 1 and 2 at Lap 56 when his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet snapped loose in the center of the turn. An overcorrection shot Larson nose-first into the outside retaining SAFER barrier and into a skid. Briscoe, who was 14th across the start/finish line before the incident, could not avoid Larson’s back bumper, resulting in heavy, race-ending damage for the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.
“There was no warning at all,” Larson said after being evaluated and released from the infield care center. “If anything, I was getting tighter and tighter. Yeah, it just caught me way off guard. I was never once, even in that same corner, like loose. It just started stepping out and I overcorrected and yeah, just overcorrected.
“I feel fine,” Larson said of the big hit off of Turn 2. “Thankfully, everything held up great, so thanks to Hendrick Motorsports and NASCAR for the safety.”
Neither driver was able to continue due to the damage incurred in the wreck. Larson will be credited with a 37th-place finish and Briscoe 38th, last, with both earning just one point in Sunday’s Quaker State 400.
Larson entered the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs as the No. 1 seed with a 35-point advantage above the elimination line. Briscoe, who earned his way into the 16-driver postseason bracket with a win in the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway in the Sept. 1 regular-season finale, entered 13th in the playoff standings, tied with Alex Bowman and Harrison Burton but beneath the elimination line.
Following Sunday’s race, Larson remained above the elimination line by 15 markers, with Briscoe plummeting to 16th and last on the playoff grid, 21 points behind Ty Gibbs, who holds the 12th and final transfer spot with two races remaining in the round.
“That’s NASCAR, right?” Briscoe told reporters outside the infield care center. “You can be on top one week and then you can be at the very bottom of the mountain the next. Unfortunately, our car, I thought, was an adjustment away from being pretty good. We weren’t very good at all balance-wise but I felt like I was able to run around the seventh- to 12th-place guys.
“I was trying to watch my outside getting into Turn 1 and I was probably a little late to seeing the No. 5 car wrecking, I didn’t really expect anyone to wreck because they weren’t two-wide. I saw the smoke and was trying to slow down, I knew he was coming down the race track. I just kept trying to feed the car left to slow it down and I just couldn’t get left quick enough.”
Drivers fought handling early in the first stage, which totaled 60 of the scheduled 260 laps that the Cup Series will turn to finish the 400-mile event at Atlanta. Briscoe fought loose in the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford before his day ended.
“You are hanging on for sure,” Briscoe said. “This place is hard; you are just on the ragged edge. For me, I was almost spinning out. That’s what I kept telling my guys. I needed to make the first pit stop to get our car better, but unfortunately, we didn’t get that opportunity. These guys are on pins and needles, that’s for sure.”
The Round of 16 consists of races at Atlanta, Watkins Glen International (Sept. 15) and Bristol Motor Speedway (Sept. 21) with the bottom four drivers without a victory in the 16-driver grid eliminated from championship contention following the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol.
Their crash occurred with just four laps remaining in Stage 1 at Atlanta, ending the stage under caution conditions. Ryan Blaney, the defending Cup champion, earned the stage victory over Team Penske teammate Austin Cindric, Alex Bowman and Joey Logano, all playoff drivers, while Ricky Stenhouse Jr. completed the top five. Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott, William Byron, Martin Truex Jr. and Ty Gibbs rounded out the top 10.
Ultimately, Logano went on to win the Quaker State 400 in overtime ahead of Daniel Suárez and Blaney. The Round of 16 continues next week at Watkins Glen (Sunday, 3 p.m. ET, USA, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Martin Truex Jr. and Ty Gibbs will drop to the rear after their Joe Gibbs Racing teams changed plug wires on their engines ahead of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, USA, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
The news, first reported by NBC Sports, follows a similar change made to their teammate Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota after Saturday’s qualifying time trials that resulted in a last-place effort for Hamlin.
According to NBC Sports, James Small, crew chief of Truex’s No. 19 Toyota, said the change was made as a precautionary measure after Toyota Racing Development crewmen observed similar issues in the engines of both the Nos. 19 and 54 Toyotas.
Because of the alteration, Truex and Gibbs will both be sent to the rear of the field to begin Sunday’s Quaker State 400. Gibbs, the sophomore driver and playoff debutant, was Toyota’s highest qualifier Saturday in 20th place after single-lap time trials.
HAMPTON, Ga. — Corey Heim has only made 11 starts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series this year, all 11 coming for the Mooresville, North Carolina-based Sam Hunt Racing. In that short time, the full-time Craftsman Truck Series competitor has put together an impressive resume, tallying three top-five finishes and a seventh-place showing at Loudon.
His most recent entry came this afternoon in the Focused Health 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he was challenging for the win on the final lap before contact with Austin Hill caused the Marietta, Georgia native to brush the wall, sending him back to the fifth position.
“I thought it was in my best interest to stay high,” Heim said on pit road after his day at Atlanta. “We didn’t have a ton of raw speed, but we had great handling, so I wanted to try and get to the top of the 21 — and we did that — but he just kinda ran me out of room. That’s not to say I would have do the exact same thing if I was in his spot, that’s just a product of this superspeedway racing.
“You have to be aggressive and take advantage of your opportunities. I thought I put ourselves in a really good spot there. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
Handling was an issue multiple drivers faced throughout the 250-mile event, with drivers fighting loose throughout the race. Heim was no stranger to the effects of a hot and slick afternoon on the high banks of the 1.5-mile track.
“It seems like this place is slicker and greaser every time we come back,” Heim said. “I mean, I don’t have any prior Xfinity Series experience here, but just based on the talk around the garage, this place seems to lose a ton of grip every time we come here. With it being so much hotter in the spring or winter time when we came last time, it certainly made for a less-gripped kind of race.”
Still, despite not achieving the result Heim or the No. 26 Sam Hunt Racing team may have hoped for, Heim is proud of the fast race cars that the team provides and takes every opportunity he can get behind the wheel and continue to learn at this stage in his game.
“Any seat time at my stage in development is really crucial,” Heim said. “Any kind of laps at any kind of track and car I can get into is pretty crucial for my development. That’s what I am here to do, to help Sam Hunt Racing find speed and I think we had a win today internally but certainly wanted the big one, just wasn’t meant to be.”
Sam Hunt Racing has been competing in the NASCAR Xfinity Series since the 2019 season and has amassed 26 top-10 finishes with 11 top fives. However, the team still chases its first win in national series competition.
Although team owner Sam Hunt feels the time is coming for the No. 26 team, he chooses to focus on the team’s upward trajectory rather than looking at just results.
“It’s really exciting,” Hunt said, standing beside his top-five Toyota Supra. “I think we’ve made a ton of improvements on our (superspeedway) cars, hybrid package cars. I am really encouraged by that, just grateful for Toyota and TRD for supporting this deal and helping us get through this weekend. We obviously love Corey and want to see him racing on Sundays.
“It’s frustrating for sure, to get put up in the fence like that, trying to win our first race. It hurts. It’s a good points day for us, but definitely frustrated to be put in the wall there at the end.”
Amid frustration after being on the doorstep of the breakthrough victory, the team owner, in his sixth year of competition, can’t say enough about the hard work his team and the drivers who have been at the wheel put into the team every week.
“You know, we’re a small group,” Hunt said. “Everybody does a lot; everybody works really really hard and, you know, It is a humble effort and for us to have this kind of speed and this kind of shot to win at this level is a testament to Corey and all of the guys and girls at the shop, so really proud.”
Editor’s note: The NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs begin Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Watch at 3 p.m. ET on USA Network or NBC Sports App, and listen on PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. | Details on Sunday’s race
Understanding one of the primary dynamics underpinning the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs is as simple as three, four, five.
Three: The number of cars that Team Penske has qualified for the playoffs (its full roster for the sixth time in seven years since expanding from a two-driver lineup).
Four: The number of cars that Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing each have in the playoffs (only the second time since JGR’s 2015 expansion that all eight cars are title eligible).
Five: The number of teams with one car in the playoffs.
So the playoffs, which begin Sunday in the Round of 16 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, can be broken down as 11 cars from three powerhouses (Penske, Hendrick, Gibbs) with perfect playoff attendance, and the rest of the 16-car field represented by organizations that each enter with one hope at the title.
There’s strength (and better odds) in numbers, right?
“I don’t see it’s a negative anywhere,” said Chase Elliott, who is back in the playoffs after missing 2023 with teammate Alex Bowman. “It’s all positive on the way we work on a weekly basis. I’d rather it be that way.”
Said defending series champion Ryan Blaney: “I don’t think there’s a negative to it. It makes everybody at the race shop proud. To have everybody in the playoffs, that’s the goal at the beginning of the year. There’s a lot of pride in that. Just a positive to all work together for a common goal.”
But there’s another numbers game in play here.
Penske teammate Joey Logano said a full boat can be less than harmonious because even the best teams in NASCAR have finite resources.
“It presents some hard questions that you have to answer,” Logano said. “When you start putting them together, sometimes there are just better cars than others. Yeah, we all have the same parts, and everything is really close, but there are some better than others, and when you make the decisions on who gets what, it’s a little harder when you have more cars in the playoffs than when you have one. It’s easier to say all the effort goes in this car that is our one chance to win the championship.
“Now it’s spread out. So it’s just different. But you’ve got to have it that way to have more opportunities to win the championship.”
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Of the five teams with a lone entry, there is one that stands out from Wood Brothers Racing, Trackhouse Racing, Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing and 23XI Racing.
Stewart-Haas Racing will have the energy of four cars and 300-plus people deployed in one direction that Chase Briscoe believes will benefit his team.
“There’s probably a disadvantage if you’re just a one-car team, but I do think there’s a big advantage to being a four-car team and having only one car in,” Briscoe said. “Those other four-car teams are trying to focus on all four of their cars bringing the best to the race track every single week.
“Even on the race track, they’re all going to be fighting amongst each other and not cut each other a break. I’ve got three teammates that essentially are going to do everything they can to help me on the race track. They can race the other guys a little harder than they’d race me. Even preparing the race cars, we can take the personnel and best of the best from each car and just apply it to our car. I definitely think there’s an advantage to the position we’re in.”
Briscoe also can be unworried about battling his teammates to advance as the field dwindles, which Hendrick, Penske and Gibbs drivers all cited as inherently causing tension as soon as the playoff opener ends.
“I don’t think there’s any negatives starting with the rope being pulled in the same direction, but it’s going to change,” William Byron said. “Hopefully we all do, but not all of us are going to make it to the final round. The goals and objectives change as the rounds go on.”
DRIVERS’ SCOUTING REPORT
Soliciting scouting reports on the championship favorites and playing word association with their top rivals can be revelatory. What some stars were saying in sizing up their chief competition during Playoff Media Day:
TEAM PENSKE After Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney won the past two championships despite relatively lackluster regular seasons, Penske’s penchant for perfectly peaking drew a lot of comments, as did its starched shirt professionalism and attention to detail.
Martin Truex Jr.: “Sneaky. They’re sneaky. Nobody had them picked last year for the championship or in 2022. They just get hot at the right time. They’re really strong in the playoffs. There’s no question they find a way to get to another gear. They’ve done it two years in a row. Everybody is looking at it and studied it and tried to figure out how we can do that, too. The last two years are all we have for the Next Gen car, and that’s the benchmark.”
Alex Bowman: “Buttoned up. Proper. Super polished on everything. It’s how everybody there carries themselves and that image they portray.”
Kyle Larson: “They just do a really good job of strategy and restarts and just executing. Paul Wolfe especially is great at that.”
William Byron: “They’ve hedged their bets on superspeedways and various tracks. They have unique tracks where they’re really good like Phoenix. The drivers are very diverse. Joey’s on the aggressive side. Austin is really good at Atlanta and Talladega, and Ryan is really good at Martinsville and Phoenix.”
Chase Briscoe: “What makes Penske so scary is how aggressive they are. The drivers are aggressive, the pit calls, everything they do is so aggressive all the time. They always can take a 15th-place car and finish fifth with it. Penske is dangerous because they always find a way to maximize their day and have the fastest car. Joey will run 15th to 18th all day and somehow get to the front.”
Chase Elliott: “Not only the drivers, but their personnel, I’ve always had a lot of admiration for a number of their guys over the years as I’ve had the chance to battle against them. It’s always very buttoned up. You don’t see them making a fool of themselves. They’re typically very professional about what they do and take it seriously.”
Brad Keselowski: “The favorite. They have the best driver lineup of the groups. They consistently get better results than the cars on the race track.”
HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS It’s simple, really: No team has had four cars longer than Hendrick (which is in its 21st season), and that stability has laid a consistent foundation for the most successful team in NASCAR history.
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Denny Hamlin: “They’ve got the resources to get the best people and drivers, and that’s going to be hard to beat. And it’s why they’ve had such a long, sustained, successful career in NASCAR is they’re able to have the resources to make sure you win with people.”
Keselowski: “They have a lot of youthful talent over there that will be there for a long time.”
Joey Logano: “They’ve been tough and strong for years. A lot of talent building race cars and behind the wheel. They’re just a powerhouse team.”
Christopher Bell: “Just consistency. It doesn’t matter where they go, they’re going to be in the hunt all the time. It could be two drivers or four, but, consistently week in and out, they’re always there.
Briscoe: “Naturally gifted, and Kyle (Larson) is at the top of that list. But Chase, William and Alex are all very good race car drivers as well as we’ve seen with Elliott and Bowman in sprint cars and Byron in Late Models.”
Truex: “They’re just consistently the standard you have to chase that you’re always looking at what they have going on.”
JOE GIBBS RACING The blend of experience (Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. have a combined 29 playoff appearances) and elite talent on the rise (Christopher Bell and Ty Gibbs) was cited as the biggest strength of a team that has gone the longest of the three since its last title (Kyle Busch in 2019).
Larson: “Their driver talent is diverse, not just in age range but in the background of racing. Denny and Martin grew up pavement racing, Christopher Bell is young with a similar (dirt) background to myself. Ty is the new generation-style driver with a quick route to the Cup Series and a little bit of dirt track racing early on and some iRacing. It’s a diverse group.”
Byron: “JGR builds some of the best cars and does a really good job preparing them. They’re really competitive at tracks that take handling like Vegas and Kansas with long-run speed and keeping the tires on the car. Their weaknesses are at the superspeedways because they don’t put as much emphasis there, but they’ll be good in the Round of 8 tracks and a threat at Phoenix with how well Bell ran there in March.”
Blaney: “It’s a great lineup with a wide variety of experience, too. It’s kind of like our group with Joey the veteran guy like Martin and Denny, I’m like Christopher, and Austin is like Ty.”
EXTOLLING BELL’S VIRTUES
Maybe it’s hard to label a driver who has made the Championship 4 the past two seasons as being overlooked, but that’s what multiple peers think about Christopher Bell.
The soft-spoken 29-year-old with the cherubic visage is never one to pound his chest (and would look highly uncharacteristic if he tried), but peers are happy to lobby for his greatness. A sampling of three Cup champions in the CBell Appreciation Club starting with Larson — who has known Bell the longest having raced dirt together for years:
Larson: “Bell is extremely good, and he’s just so quiet that people don’t recognize how good he is. It’s hard to stand out in NASCAR, but in dirt, he goes so fast without looking like he’s going fast. He’s so smooth. He never makes mistakes. He just looks so calm in the car. When I watch myself, I look like I’m hauling ass, but I’m going the same speed as him, and I’m erratic. I feel like he’s just in control all the time. A really smart race car driver.”
Elliott: “Extremely underrated and probably isn’t appreciated or talked about enough for performing at a high level. He does an exceptional job. One of the smoothest guys in the field and has a nice understanding of where his tire limitations are and is able to drive within the means of what the car is offering.”
Blaney: “Christopher is honestly very underrated. I think he’s finally starting to get some more recognition like ‘Hey, this guy is really good.’ He’s incredibly smooth. You never see him out of control. That’s pretty big on how he manages the race, his car, his driving style. He does a really good job thinking his way through races. They don’t always start off great, but they always get better.”
FINAL RIDE FOR TRUEX JR.
How does Martin Truex Jr. want to be remembered after the last playoffs of his career? The answer is as effortless as his driving style: “Respect that I was really good at what I do. Fast, smart, clean, very fair to race with and a tough competitor.”
But reflecting on 19 seasons is a little more complicated for the oldest full-time driver in the Cup Series (which will become Denny Hamlin next year).
Truex, who turned 44 in June, has witnessed not only generational changes (“it’s crazy with Ty Gibbs, Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, how young they are and what they’ve accomplished already”) but also had a front-row seat for seismic shifts in NASCAR team hierarchies.
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He witnessed the demise of Dale Earnhardt Inc. and the trigger of Michael Waltrip Racing’s eventual shuttering. He then endured the worst season of his career (a 24th-place points finish in 2014 at Furniture Row Racing) before a decade-long renaissance as a perennial title contender (including the move to Gibbs after Furniture Row Racing’s shutdown).
So as Truex reflects on nearly 700 starts in Cup, he is grateful.
“There were times in my career I thought it was coming to an end pretty soon,” he said. “So I definitely lasted longer than I thought, especially back then. I feel very fortunate to have accomplished what I have. I’m very lucky to go out on my own terms when I think back to the days when I was struggling and wondering where is this all going and what am I going to do.”
But he concedes the second-guessing remains about winning one championship in five title race appearances (so far).
“You always look back at what you wish you did better,” he said. “The three second-place championship finishes still hurt. I feel like I probably should have three championships, not one. I’d say four. I think the one we got actually we weren’t the fastest car that race and kind of stole that one (in 2017).
“Kyle (Busch) and I switched out from 2017 to 2019. We had the best car in ’19 and he won, and he had the best car in ’17 and we won. It’s hard to complain about the amount of wins we had. What hurts is the amount we were so close after dominating races and then get the late caution or not a good enough pit stop. That happened how many times.”
The heartbreaks were so frequent, Truex doesn’t even rank losing the Daytona 500 by 0.010 seconds as among the worst. “That was a fair loss because there wasn’t a caution coming out or something going haywire, we got beat fair and square that time,” he said. “There’s just a lot of other almosts.
“But if you would have told me 15 years ago that I’d win 34 races and a championship, I’d be like, that sounds pretty damn good to me.”
SHADES OF STEWART
Along with Truex’s goodbye, the curtain also will drop on Stewart-Haas Racing as the playoffs end, and Briscoe said the team is using one of its biggest historical markers as the rallying cry in the last hurrah.
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In 2011, Tony Stewart won five of the last 10 races in claiming a championship despite admittedly certifying himself as a non-factor after a winless regular season for SHR. Something clicked in his cars and confidence, and Briscoe believes the same is happening again with Stewart-Haas team members motivated in multiple ways (sentimental, pride, source of income) by his emphatically stunning Southern 500 victory.
“For us to make the playoffs the way we did it and to have the opportunity in our final season to be a one-in-16 chance for the championship is pretty special,” Briscoe said. “That makes us scary, too, for that reason. We are willing to do whatever it takes. We have nothing to lose. All of us are hungry and trying to prove our worth. A lot of guys are still trying to find jobs. If they can say they’re a champion of the sport, it makes it way easier.
“I’ve never seen our building as confident and as electric as it is right now. I think our race team specifically, we thought we could win but didn’t know at the end of the day. Now we know we can win, and not just any race. The Southern 500 is arguably the hardest race in the entire schedule to win. If we can win that race, we feel we can win any race. We also know if we get to Phoenix, we’re really, really good there. We all think we can win the championship.”
THE NO. 48 SEAT
Though Alex Bowman has vetted whether his job status is predicated on advancing through the playoffs (it’s not, according to the high-level calls he made), he also has made a point of repeatedly holding himself, crew chief Blake Harris and the rest of the No. 48 accountable for getting results in the playoffs.
Since following his Chicago victory (ending an 80-race winless drought) with a third at Pocono, Bowman has finished outside the top 15 in five consecutive races. But he points to a conversation with Harris before the March 17 race at Bristol as the north star for a turnaround.
“Blake came to my window and said, ‘You and I are the only two who can fix it,’ ” said Bowman, who finished fourth at Bristol (ending a three-race streak outside the top 15). “We were struggling early in the year, and that was a turning point for our season. Now going into playoffs, we need to be better than we’ve been by a good chunk. We’ve got a lot we need to do better as a race team consistently. We’re all super bought into trying to make that happen. I feel it’s up to him and me to lead the way.”
NO DIRT FOR YOU … FOR NOW
Kyle Larson will be a “full pavement NASCAR guy” for the playoffs, but it’s a scheduling decision that drove his call to skip dirt races through September and October. With the team that normally fields sprint cars for Larson wrapping up a West Coast run, there were only a few dirt races that logistically would have worked for Larson to moonlight over the next 10 weeks anyway.
“I didn’t feel like I need for (the team) to come all the way back to the East Coast to run, so I said why don’t I just not race,” Larson said.
That won’t keep him from poring over his 2025 calendar for the foreseeable future. Though his management and PR team can add appearances and commitments to his calendar, “when it comes to racing, that’s all me,” Larson said. “So like the NASCAR schedule just came out, which is great, but the sprint car schedules haven’t come out yet, so I haven’t dug in a whole lot but hopefully the next month or so, I can fully dive in. I have a nice Excel sheet with all the different races I can run. I enjoy it. In the offseason, I definitely look at my Excel sheet calendar multiple times a day.”
Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is the host of the NASCAR on NBC Podcast and also has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.
HAMPTON, Ga. — Seizing the lead for the first time on Lap 152 of 163 of Saturday’s Focused Health 250, Austin Hill stayed out front the rest of the way to win his fourth NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, his home track.
The 30-year-old driver from Winston, Georgia, won for the third time this season and completed a sweep of the two Atlanta races. Seven of Hill’s nine career series victories have come at drafting-style tracks.
“I’m speechless right now,” Hill said in Victory Lane. “Our Bennett Chevrolet had speed all day, but the handling just was not there the way that I would like. You come to these superspeedway-style events, and you want to have a car that’s trimmed out. You don’t worry too much about handling.
“But I thought handling was going to be an issue, and it definitely played a part today. We made some right moves at the right time between my spotter, Derek Kneeland, and me. We got up to second and when we had that restart (on Lap 150), I was contemplating ‘Do I go top, or do I go bottom?’
“We both agreed that we have to go bottom and try to get to the lead, and if the bottom didn’t work out, then so be it.”
Hill got help from an unexpected source. He expressed surprise that he got a decisive push on the final lap from Toyota driver Corey Heim, who was making his first superspeedway start in the Xfinity Series.
Toyota driver Chandler Smith was equally surprised–and frustrated. Smith dropped to the bottom to attempt to pass Hill on the final circuit and briefly nosed past the front bumper of Hill’s No. 21 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. Heim stayed with Hill on top.
“I expected my Toyota teammate to come with me, and he didn’t,” said Smith, who ultimately finished fourth in the No. 81 Joe Gibbs Racing Supra. “I’m kind of speechless.”
Heim, who finished fifth behind Smith, thought his best chance to win the race was to stay with Hill.
“He (Smith) had no run and no momentum, so why go to the bottom?” Heim explained.
After he pushed Hill clear of Smith, Heim tried a pass at the top of the track but brushed the outside wall and lost momentum. Parker Kligerman swept past Heim into second place, with AJ Allmendinger following.
Hill beat Kligerman to the finish line by 0.340 seconds, with Allmendinger in third, just 0.004 seconds behind Kligerman.
“Congrats to Austin Hill — he’s the master of this place,” said Kligerman, who matched his career-best finish in the series.
A multicar crash on Lap 145 dramatically altered the complexion of the race. Contact between the competitive cars of Justin Allgaier and Cole Custer ignited a six-car incident that collected the machines of Taylor Gray, Ryan Sieg, Riley Herbst and pole winner Jesse Love.
The wreck was particularly detrimental to Sieg, who is chasing Sammy Smith for the final spot in the 12-driver Xfinity Series Playoffs.
Sieg was running in the top 10 after making up a two-lap deficit–the result of an electrical issue in the opening laps–when the wreck occurred. He dropped from 10 to 44 points behind Smith, who overcame a pit-road safety violation penalty to finish seventh.
The incident sidelined both Allgaier and Custer, who are battling for the Regular Season Championship. Allgaier maintains a 34-point margin over the reigning series champion, but both Smith (67 points behind) and Hill (71 points) now have outside chances to overtake the leader.
NOTE: Post-race inspection was completed without issue in the Xfinity Series garage, confirming Austin Hill as the winner. The Nos. 26 and 31 will head to the NASCAR Research & Development Center in Concord, North Carolina, for further evaluation.
Michael McDowell roared to his second straight Atlanta Motor Speedway pole with a fast final-round lap of 179.267 mph in the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford. The 39-year-old driver went his first 466 Cup Series races without a pole position; now he has a harvest of five poles in his last 25 races.
Ford swept the top-five starting spots, with Kyle Larson in the fastest Chevrolet in sixth. Ty Gibbs mustered the fastest lap among Toyota drivers but will start 20th. Denny Hamlin qualified last, well off the pace in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. He said later that his team was investigating a powertrain issue. | Full Saturday recap
Big story line
Fortunes of three drivers shift in an Atlanta blink
The last time the NASCAR Cup Series visited Atlanta Motor Speedway, the first three cars that crossed the start-finish line abreast at the checkered flag were separated by just 0.007 seconds. For the three drivers who pressed toward that micron-close finish, their fates took multiple twists between that February stop and Sunday’s return trip that opens the 10-race Cup Series Playoffs.
Daniel Suárez’s No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet was the first car there as the Mexican-born driver secured his second Cup Series win, snapping up a postseason berth in the process. By the time he reached Wednesday’s Cup Series Playoffs Media Day, Suárez said he’d already seen the replay of the three-wide conclusion several times that morning, reaffirming the enduring link that he’ll have with that moment.
“People love talking about it,” Suárez said. “I think it was a great finish, and obviously something that people are going to talk about for a very, very long time every time that we go back to Atlanta. It’s going to be in the history books, and I’m just very happy that I was the one that won it, because if not, if I was Blaney or Busch, I would feel very bad about it.”
That’s Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch, who were the other competitors in contention, falling short by just a whisker. Blaney’s No. 12 Team Penske Ford was 0.003 seconds behind at the checkers, and it took the defending Cup Series champ nearly five months to make his playoff return official with a breakthrough win at Iowa Speedway. Contrary to what Suárez thought, Blaney didn’t “feel very bad,” and he enters Atlanta with four of his 12 Cup Series victories coming on superspeedway-style tracks.
“I didn’t feel upset about it,” said Blaney, who also has his two Team Penske teammates (Joey Logano and Austin Cindric) in the playoff mix as well. “It was pretty wild and I kind of put in my head like, ‘I’ve won them by that much, too.’ So, the fact that I lost one by half a foot, I can’t really be mad about it. I’ve won more than my fair share of what I honestly should have won, just by odds, by a foot or two. It was just a neat finish. I didn’t know who won. … Like I said, that’s like the only time I wasn’t upset about running second at all. It was like, ‘Oh, we didn’t win. Well, that was still a good night.'”
The driver 0.007 seconds behind was Busch, who languished through a dreadful summer slump before making two valiant late bids to make the playoff field. He ended up outside the postseason picture, with two runner-up finishes behind first-time 2024 winners Harrison Burton (Daytona) and Chase Briscoe (Darlington) to close the regular season.
He said seeing replays of the Atlanta photo finish still stings somewhat, and that his goals for the final 10 races of the season are twofold — extending his streak of seasons with a win to 20 consecutive years, and playing playoff spoiler from the outside looking in.
“Just another weekend, another race, nothing really,” Busch said, noting that with the nature of superspeedway events, “anything can happen in those styles of races. So we’ve been strong at them this year, though, like Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta, so that gives you some optimism — added optimism maybe, more than, say, what I was used to for years of just dreading these places. So we’ll just see if we can’t score a win here this time.”
History tells us…
Manufacturers make their Atlanta moves. Since Atlanta Motor Speedway was reconfigured to an intermediate-sized track with higher banking in 2022, prompting a shift to superspeedway-style rules, Chevrolet drivers have won four of the five races. Three of those have been snatched up by Hendrick Motorsports drivers — with William Byron prevailing twice, and home-state favorite Chase Elliott once.
Despite those high marks on the results sheet, Ford flexed its muscle in Saturday’s Busch Pole Qualifying with seven Mustang Dark Horses among the top 10. It’s the seventh consecutive superspeedway-style event with a Ford on the pole.
He may not be the betting favorite to win, but watch out for…
AUSTIN CINDRIC. Since Atlanta’s reinvention, Cindric has been sneaky consistent with the third-best average finish here (12.4) in the Cup Series field. He’s led multiple laps in the last four Atlanta races and had a prime seat for February’s photo finish in fourth place.
The Team Penske driver starts fifth in Sunday’s 400-miler and sets off as an 18-1 pick. He broke a two-plus-year skid with his June victory at Gateway, but his only other Cup Series win was at a superspeedway in the 2022 Daytona 500. | Atlanta odds
Speed reads
Our biggest pieces of the week — get covered for race day from all angles.
• Compelling playoff topics: Five thought-starters as postseason dawns | Read article
• Title defense sets sail: Ryan Blaney rides confidence into Atlanta | Read article
• Sensing a shake-up: Larson counting on unpredictability | Read article
• 2025 reunion: Truex says Cole Pearn would be crew chief for potential Daytona 500 bid | Read article
• Bubble Watch: High risk, reward abound for postseason hopefuls | Photo gallery
• ‘Rare opportunity’: Playoff underdogs embracing the moment | Read article
• What they’re saying: Best driver quotes from Cup Series Playoffs Media Day | Photo gallery
• Penske’s pit-stop mix: From shark-attack survivor to playoffs, Joe Dilly blends with veteran crew | Read article
• Playoff programming: NASCAR Studios launches three new shows | Read article
• Get in the game: Join the Cup Series Playoffs Grid Challenge | How to play
• Computer modeling: Results of 10,000 simulations of title battle | Read article • Power Rankings: Paring down our list to the sweet 16 | Photo gallery
• Tier mentality: Categories, designations for all 16 playoff drivers | Photo gallery • Turning Point: Potential spoilers, favorites saddle up for Atlanta | Read article
• NASCAR Betting: Wait-and-see approach to championship odds | Read article
• Racing Insights: Full finishing order projections for Sunday’s playoff opener | Read article • 36 for 36: Check out this week’s survivor pool picks | Read article
• Fantasy Fastlane: Turning to Team Penske for Atlanta lineup | Photo gallery
• Memorable moments: Races for the history books from Atlanta | Photo gallery
• Atlanta all-timers: Full list of Cup Series race winners | Photo gallery • NASCAR Classics: Rewind with three Atlanta all-timers from the vault | Read article
• Paint Scheme Preview: Fresh designs for Atlanta playoff opener | Pick your favorite
Fast facts ⏩
Race-relevant statistics, brought to you by the experts at Racing Insights.
• The last two Cup Series winners at Atlanta started 18th or worse; the previous two were both pole winners. • The pole winner has also become the race winner just once this season, back when William Byron prevailed at Circuit of The Americas in March.
• February’s Atlanta event registered a track record of 48 lead changes, besting the previous mark of 46 in the spring of 2022.
HAMPTON, Ga. — Don’t put too much stock in William Byron’s spotty performance in the NASCAR Cup Series this summer.
The driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet brushed off those concerns during a Saturday question-and-answer session at Atlanta Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s Quaker State 400 available at Walmart (3 p.m. ET on USA, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
After winning the season-opening Daytona 500, Byron picked up victories in two of the next seven races, at Circuit of The Americas and Martinsville Speedway, but the 26-year-old from Charlotte, North Carolina, hasn’t won since.
Nevertheless, Byron enters the 10-race playoffs with confidence.
“Well, I mean, yeah, we finished second two and a half weeks ago at Michigan, so I feel like we’ve been pretty good; hit or miss, though,” Byron said. “Some of those tracks during the summer aren’t as good for us as a team, but we’ve really circled all of the playoff tracks and worked really hard to have our best at the end of the year.
“So, yeah, I think once you win two or three races early in the season, like I said this week, the goal is to try and stack playoff points. If you can’t do that, then the goal is to try and position yourself well for the fall and all the tracks in the playoffs. So, I feel good about that.”
Byron has won two of the last five races at Atlanta, and he took the checkered flag last year at Watkins Glen, the second venue in the first round of the playoffs.
“We’ve had success here at Atlanta,” Byron said. “Although it can be unpredictable, I feel like, as I’ve studied and watched it back, a lot of times if you’re up in the front and making good decisions, you can kind of control your destiny here.
“I think that’s the goal for us … try to have a good day today in qualifying. Not quite sure what kind of speed we’re going to have in qualifying because you want to be able to have enough pace in the pack and everything like that — enough grip. Hopefully, we can make the top 10 and go from there.”
Byron did just that. One of six playoff drivers to make the final 10 in time trials, Byron will start ninth on Sunday.
See where your favorite NASCAR Cup Series driver will pit for the Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday (3 p.m. ET, USA, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
