As Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin demonstrated Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, superspeedway success sometimes can hinge on an agonizing choice between being daringly great or intentionally mediocre.
Logano presciently outlined that dichotomy four days before winning the playoff opener.
Asked who was the best driver in NASCAR’s premier series on the drafting tracks of Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta (where it’s necessary to race inches from other cars and often ram them at speeds approaching 200 mph), he essentially threw up his hands.
“With superspeedway racing in general now, it’s hard to point out the best,” Logano said on Cup Series Playoff Media Day. “The best superspeedway racers wreck every single time. I’m one of the best, (as are) Brad (Keselowski) and Denny, and more times than not, we end up on the hook because the wrecks start at the front, and we’re there. It’s really confusing right now.”
Perplexing might be the best way to explain Hamlin’s performance at Atlanta.
The three-time Daytona 500 winner hung back in the 38-car field and bided his time waiting for the massive playoff-altering wreck that never came.
He started at the rear with teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Ty Gibbs because of unapproved adjustments, but only Hamlin willingly stayed there while many around him slammed the accelerator and disappeared into the fray ahead.
Gibbs earned points in both stages and was leading with 10 laps remaining. Ryan Blaney restarted 32nd in a damaged car with less than 50 laps remaining and still surged to finish third while pushing Penske teammate Logano to the victory.
Hamlin, whose average running position was 30.8, chose discretion as the better part of valor over 400-plus miles and eventually paid the price.
“Tried to avoid wrecks all day and just got in the last one,” Hamlin said. “At the very end we got the (car) kind of where it needed to be, but by then, you were kind of dealing with a logjam, and you couldn’t go much of anywhere, so I just tried to avoid the wrecks.
“I was trying to get 20 points out of the day. That was my goal, just get 20 however we could.”
His final tally was 13 points after a pileup on the final lap negated the positions he needed to attain a very modest objective — 20 points is a third of the maximum for a race winner who sweeps the stages.
Hamlin eschewed going for stage points Sunday — perhaps mindful of a 14-point effort despite leading 15 laps in his previous trip to Atlanta.
In that Feb. 25 race, he crashed twice while running in the top 10 near the end of both stages. In Stage 2, Hamlin got caught in a wreck that started when Logano was tapped into the wall while desperately trying to stay in fourth.
That was one of three superspeedway crashes this year for Logano, who aptly described after winning Sunday why it can be so maddening.
“Superspeedway racing is a lot of fun until it’s not,” he said. “It’s actually really entertaining, even from inside the car. The chess match that it is, trying to outsmart your competitors. It’s really fun until you just wreck. Then you’re like, ‘Man, this sucks.’ There’s no better way of saying it. It’s just great until it’s not.”
Alejandro Alvarez | NASCAR Digital Media
Having combined for nine career wins at Daytona and Talladega, Logano and Hamlin arguably are the two best superspeedway drivers in NASCAR.
But by points scored, they were ranked the two worst playoff drivers on drafting tracks in the 2024 regular season.
Logano compiled 71 points in four races (Atlanta in March, Talladega in April and Daytona in February and August), which was 25th overall in the Cup Series per Racing Insights.
Hamlin was much worse in those four races, amassing 46 points and slotting in 32nd overall.
A future NASCAR Hall of Famer who once made all the right moves in the draft (witness his last-lap passes for Daytona 500 wins in 2016 and ’20) suddenly could do nothing right during an eternally snake-bitten season on superspeedways.
So his team elected the time-honored superspeedway strategy of sandbagging. Despite a few stray protestations on his team radio, Hamlin was fully committed and matter-of-factly endorsed it afterward.
“I did what I wanted to do, and that was lay in the back most of the race and try to see what attrition came about,” he said.
Even though it requires less effort, there’s hardly shame in sitting back at superspeedways. Drivers have won at Daytona and Talladega after long stretches of riding, and it’s a long-accepted way of doing business at Joe Gibbs Racing. The team has employed the strategy for more than 20 years, dating to when Tony Stewart and Bobby Labonte often formed a half-throttle tandem at Daytona and Talladega.
In 2016, Hamlin and teammates Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards remained in the back for 500 miles at Talladega. The trio finished 28th to 30th and advanced to the next round despite cries of whether they had complied with the “100 percent rule.” (NASCAR executives confirmed the tactics were legal.)
Championship implications were the narrative again at Atlanta — but the conversation has shifted to whether this move could mean an early playoff exit for Hamlin. He is just two points above the elimination line after losing eight points from his cushion to start the playoffs in pursuit of an elusive first title.
The decision by Hamlin and crew chief Chris Gabehart to stay in the back felt like the antithesis of a fateful call in the 2019 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The team applied a massive piece of tape to the front grille of Hamlin’s car in hopes of catching eventual champion Kyle Busch but instead caused overheating that forced an unscheduled pit stop and wiped away a shot at the win.
In both instances — by accident at Homestead, deliberately at Atlanta — the No. 11 team took the ball from the hands of its superstar.
Now it’ll be on Hamlin’s shoulders to keep his championship bid alive at Watkins Glen International and Bristol Motor Speedway.
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.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Checkered flags, brightly colored walls, racing mascots and uplifting photos featuring NASCAR legends Richard Petty, Jeff Gordon and the late Dale Earnhardt greet patients and their families from the moment they exit the elevator at the Halifax Medical Center’s beloved Speediatrics Unit.
It’s all a warm, full-throttle sort of assurance that top-level medicine and hearts full of care surround and support. It’s evident from the steady year-round stream of racing greats that visit and share pep talks with patients and their families, and it’s especially evident this month with a special outpouring of gifts — the Speedy Bear Brigade courtesy of The NASCAR Foundation and powered by Kaulig Giving.
Sept. 9 is officially “National Teddy Bear Day” and for The NASCAR Foundation — founded by the late Betty Jane France — the day represents a special opportunity to deliver teddy bears directly to children’s hospitals across the United States — to extend a year-long message of support and kindness and offer crucial minutes of peace and happiness to these young patients. To gift a smile.
It’s one of the most anticipated giving events each year for The NASCAR Foundation and is full-heartedly supported by many volunteers from the racing industry — including NASCAR drivers and team members — who take the time to deliver these teddy bears in conjunction with employees from NASCAR and its race facilities across the United States. This year, The NASCAR Foundation and Kaulig Giving are joining together to deliver 4,000 NASCAR-themed teddy bears to children in 110 hospitals across North America.
“I’ve been in the hospital on lots and lots of deliveries,” said Vice President and Executive Director of The NASCAR Foundation, Nichole Krieger, “and I still remember one woman at Jeff Gordon’s Children’s Hospital in Concord, North Carolina. She wrote a note to us and said, ‘Thank you for coming and giving us the bear. Even if it just took us away for 15 minutes, we had a distraction. And having a distraction during our day for something other than being poked and prodded just meant the world.’
“Regardless, if they’re a NASCAR fan or know any of the drivers that we have come in, that shows just having someone take time out of their day to come and visit, makes their day.”
It’s a feeling and moment that NASCAR team owner, Kaulig Racing’s Matt Kaulig understands well — and a large reason why he has supported The NASCAR Foundation and specifically this outreach. His daughter Samantha — now 17 — was in the Akron Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit when she was born. And he has been a part of this teddy bear effort at his hometown Akron now for nearly a decade — or as Kaulig estimates, thousands of teddy bears ago.
“When we found out about it several years ago from The NASCAR Foundation that they were giving teddy bears to kids in hospitals, it’s just perfect so we immediately started doing it,” he said.
This year, Kaulig Giving and The NASCAR Foundation have generously raised the “bear” bar. Not only are he and his team members actively participating in the event, but Kaulig is also giving $25,000 to the foundation to match donations and encourage people to make a $25 donation to the Speedy Bear project at nascarfoundation.org.
“We’ve got the University of Akron marching band coming, a parade and we have some of the mascots coming up and we’re making a really big deal of it for these kids even if they’re just looking out the window [from the hospital] or for some who are allowed to make their way outside,” Kaulig said.
“The whole thing is to brighten their day. Nobody wants to be in a hospital — none of these kids wants to be in a hospital — so it’s about anything you can do to brighten their day.”
The NASCAR Foundation
That spirit and generosity is evident at the Halifax unit and in its attention to detail. From walking in and seeing photos of NASCAR personalities — famous drivers and France family members like the late Betty Jane France and her grandson, current NASCAR executive Ben Kennedy — on the wall smiling with patients.
The hallways feature bright paintings of mascots “Pit Stop Pete, Air Gun Annie and Lou Chief” and the ceilings are thoughtfully filled with checkered flags and uplifting messages for those patients looking upward while transported on gurneys.
The “Pit Stop” room is filled with books, board games and video games to provide a distraction. Even the beds’ colorful pillowcases are decorated with race cars.
And then there’s the prominent autograph wall — two huge checkered flags not only signed by the famous race car drivers and personalities that visit but also by the brave patients who recovered there — many whose stays were made just a little more bear-able by the thoughtful teddy bear gifts made possible by so many in the NASCAR community.
This year the Speedy Bear Brigade is also providing $160,000 in grants to children’s hospitals in NASCAR track markets.
“It just snowballed and now we’ve done the Speedy Bear Brigade for eight years and we’re up to 110 hospitals and every year we keep upping our bear order,” said Krieger, who confirmed this year’s national donation total will be the largest to date. “It’s all really so remarkable.”
HAMPTON, Ga. — Sometimes the best-hatched plans just work out, especially when the stakes are highest. When Team Penske mates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney lined up for the final restart in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs curtain-lifter at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the execution — as it had been all day — was as crisp as the perfectly sharp seams of a Team Penske oxford shirt.
Roger Penske-owned cars made the maximum of Sunday’s playoff-opening Quaker State 400, won by Logano’s No. 22 Ford in overtime thanks to a stout and timely push to the front by Blaney’s No. 12 Mustang, battered, bruised and patched from a final-stage stack-up. The last two Cup Series champions took control of the final two-lap dash, providing a brilliant launching pad for the organization after the first of 10 postseason races. Blaney placed third by just a hair behind runner-up Daniel Suárez in a coincidental reprise of their photo finish at Atlanta from February, and third team driver Austin Cindric ended up 10th after dominating the opening two stages.
All three found solid footing for postseason starters. Team Penske navigated a wild-card race that caused havoc for several of the 16 playoff contenders at the high-banked, superspeedway-style hybrid. The three-car outfit minimized unforced errors, and any pitfalls that arose that weren’t of its doing were deftly deflected with a mix of resilience and veteran poise. The organization dedicated the victory to the memory of Roy McCauley, a former crew chief and longtime lead for the team’s assembly shop who died last month.
“We knew we needed to execute here,” Travis Geisler, Team Penske’s competition director, told NASCAR.com. “This was one we had circled as an important race for us to, if you didn’t win, you needed to gather up a lot of points, and I feel great about the only car that didn’t gather up a ton of stage points got the win, so we kind of executed that as needed. Sometimes luck’s on your side, the 12 being able to recover from that issue, and he definitely put the rally cap on there to come from last to what looks like third now, but I mean, Team Penske is built for the playoffs, I think. I can’t say enough about what Roy McCauley has done to make that part of what our company DNA is. He did such a great job of preparing us for this time of year every year, and now we’re just trying to carry through on his work.”
Built for the playoffs feels like a Team Penske trait, but the organization has also established itself as a force at superspeedway-style racing, with Logano, Blaney and Cindric combining to lead 134 of Sunday’s 266 laps. Since Atlanta’s transformation into a drafting-reliant track in 2022, Logano has won twice in six races, and those performances have helped to tilt what’s otherwise a fairly level, underdog-friendly playing field.
Mapping out all potential strategies also helped shift the tide. As the race progressed, Logano keyed his radio with a reminder to set a pre-discussed plan for restarts in motion. Pressed for details about what the drivers game-planned in the motorcoach lot, Logano said the finer points of how they drew it up would stay under wraps.
“We go over a lot of stuff together,” Logano said. “We prep a lot together, separately and together sometimes. Speedway racing these days, it’s just so interesting. Every track is a little bit different, Daytona, Talladega, Atlanta, all kind of a breed of their own. When you have fast cars like we do right now on these speedways, it’s important for to us capitalize as a team. These are our bread and butter right now. We’ve proven that really over the last year-plus, that this is our type of race track.”
After the race, Blaney met Cindric as he left pit road, offering congratulations and telling him that their plan worked out. Like Logano, he also opted to keep the details of the X’s and O’s to himself.
“No, I can’t tell you about that,” Blaney laughed. “We work really hard at planning out, ‘Hey, if we’re in these spots.’ We do that really well as a team, between myself and Joey and Austin and Harrison (Burton) of, ‘Hey, if we’re in these positions at the end of these speedway races, how do we approach it, right? Let’s try to have a plan,’ and if we are in this spot, OK, now we kind of know what to do or what we are thinking, just so you’re on the same page.”
All three drivers benefited from the synergy. The victory granted Logano safe passage to the playoffs’ next phase, the Round of 12, but the Atlanta tote board also showed Team Penske with three of the top four points-earners for the afternoon. Blaney and Cindric alternated their placements in sweeping 1-2 finishes at the stage breaks, each gathering 19 additional points. Those bonuses moved Blaney into the Cup Series points lead for the second time this season and shoved Cindric up three spots in the playoff standings, his cushion above the elimination line swelling to plus-27.
How they preserved those early showings required a recovery effort, and Blaney’s sponsor seemed fitting at the end of it. The damaged No. 12 Team Penske Ford he wrangled to a third-place finish wore large, shiny patches of 200-mph tape on its driver’s side — battle scars from a Lap 205 crack-up with Chris Buescher and Martin Truex Jr. The tape partially obscured his car number and the fender placement of his on-the-nose sponsor, Dent Wizard.
Both how the car straightened out after wall contact and how much work his crew put in to keep it intact were reasons for Blaney to marvel.
“It’s a good day. You know, I can’t really complain,” Blaney said. “I think it’s pretty much the most points you could score out there without winning.”
Cindric was torn about how his day unfolded. He led a race-best 92 laps by commanding the race’s second stage, but a pit sequence early in the final stage included contact and sluggishness on the left-front that forced him to restart 19th. Cindric rallied for a top-10 finish and a potent points bounty but absorbed the feeling of missed opportunity when the potential for a round-saving victory evaporated.
“I feel exactly the same as how I walked in this morning,” said Cindric, who started fifth. “I expected a performance like today. I expected a qualifying effort like we had yesterday. I think the expectation is high within our organization and, honestly, within myself. So I felt like a win was very possible today, and we didn’t do that. So I’m right in the middle, very neutral.”
Logano didn’t have the best points total of the Team Penske trio, but putting his No. 22 car in Victory Lane made those markers almost immaterial. Logano might’ve entered the postseason slightly overlooked, a strange spot for a two-time Cup Series champion and the only active driver eligible for a shot at a third title this year. He started the playoffs midpack among a gaggle of one-race winners from the regular season, but Sunday’s Atlanta win placed him front and center in the postseason ranks.
“When it’s playoff time, it’s our time,” Logano exulted after exiting his car on Atlanta’s frontstretch. He may as well have been speaking for all three Team Penske drivers, but he also established a foundation for what could be his sixth Championship 4 bid. Just like Sunday’s play-calling, that’s the plan.
“Yeah, I think confidence in his team, our experience, what we’ve been able to do in the past in big moments, big situations where there’s a lot on the line,” said No. 22 crew chief Paul Wolfe. “I said that to some people earlier this week, that when we get to playoff time, like worrying about ‘Is Joey Logano going to be performing where I need him to be’ is the last thing on my mind. You know when it’s playoff time, he’s going to show up and give you all he’s got, can handle situations like this.
HAMPTON, Ga. — Daniel Suárez needed to leave the opening round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs with a good points day after entering Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway only one point above the elimination line to advance to the Round of 12.
A second-place finish after the checkered flag fell in NASCAR Overtime might indicate it was mission successful. Still, for Suárez, the bitterness of not winning after leading before the final caution fell almost outweighs the positives of the big-picture fight.
“It kinda stings that we’re not in Victory Lane,” Suárez said on pit road following the 400-mile event. “That’s racing, we have to continue to work, but it’s good starting out in the playoffs. Honestly, right now I don’t care about the points. It just hurts that we’re not in Victory Lane.”
It was a team-versus-team showdown on the final restart as the premier series’ best looked to punch their ticket into the next round of the playoffs with Team Penske’s Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney lined up on the inside against Trackhouse Racing’s Suárez and Ross Chastain defending the top.
It was an almost-perfect scenario for the Monterrey, Mexico native looking to defend the win from February and go back-to-back at the 1.5-mile superspeedway-style track that propelled him into the postseason hunt. But ultimately, Logano stood tall as Chastain fell back in Turns 3 and 4 coming to the white flag, leaving Suárez with no help and settling for a runner-up spot.
“I can’t thank the No. 1 team enough,” Suárez said. “He pushed me very, very good on the restart, all the way through Turns 1 and 2 and through Turns 3 and 4. He kept me in position; we were right there in the fight with the second push. After the second push, I don’t know if he got a flat tire or what, I don’t know what happened exactly but once I lost him, I knew that it was game over because that was my dancing partner.”
Crew chief Matt Swiderski, on top of the box for the No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet, was tasked with keeping his driver focused on the big picture under the final caution, encouraging Suárez to take what the track would give him in the final two laps in overtime.
“We had a good car,” Swiderski told NASCAR.com while pushing his second-place car back to the Cup Series garage. “I got us a little crossed up on pit road getting into (Logano), so the team did a good job at getting back up front and getting it fixed. Really, we just had to look for big picture as bad as we wanted to win it, we will still take this.
“I think we feel really good about Watkins Glen. That is a place that we can go to and have a really strong day and hopefully build a little bit of a gap going into Bristol. That can go either way; you could be wrecked out early there. So, if we could just build a little cushion there, we would feel a lot better about it.”
Suárez leaves Atlanta 22 points above the elimination line in ninth place on the playoff grid heading to the road course at Watkins Glen International on Sept. 15 (3 p.m. ET, USA, MRN Radio, NBC Sports App, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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.
Jacob Kupferman | Getty Images
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.
