Noah Gragson and Sage Karam said that they met with NASCAR officials Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway in an effort to put their on-track incident in last weekend’s Xfinity Series race behind them.
The two drivers indicated that they’d shaken hands and come to an understanding in separate interviews with NBC Sports during Saturday’s pre-race coverage at Atlanta. Gragson started sixth with Karam 25th in the Alsco Uniforms 250.
The pair tangled last Saturday at Road America, with Gragson’s No. 9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet making a retaliatory move toward Karam’s Alpha Prime Racing No. 45 Chevy shortly past the midway point of the Henry 180. That ignited a severe multicar crash on the 4.048-mile road course, snaring several drivers in its wake.
Gragson was penalized Wednesday, hit with a $35,000 fine and a 30-point deduction for rough driving that violated the NASCAR Member Code of Conduct. Saturday at Atlanta, the two met and were seen casually chatting during driver introductions.
“It’s good. I’ve got a lot of respect for him and the rest of the guys in the series just being able to talk to him, and I really didn’t know him that much,” Gragson told NBC Sports. “So just getting to understand where he was coming from and kind of the way he was racing and kind of give him my side of the story. But you know, we shook hands and we’re gonna go race hard today and put on a show in the Xfinity Series. … I think last week is behind us and ready to go race hard this weekend.”
“We met this morning and it was actually nice just to get in a room and talk with Noah,” Karam said, who makes his eighth career start Saturday at Atlanta. “You know, I didn’t know him on a personal level, I’ve only known him from on track, but I think it went really well. I think we’ve buried the hatchet and can move forward.
“I think for me, it’s like I’m racing up there up front and getting to race a guy like Noah, who’s very fast. He’s won a lot of races, he’s with a very good team, so you know, I race him hard out of respect. I think that’s a respect thing. I want to beat him and he wants to beat me, but he apologized for the contact on the straightaway. I apologized for maybe rubbing into the door a little bit too much and yeah, it’s all learning experiences for sure.”
Parker Kligerman may be a popular television race commentator but the 31-year-old Connecticut driver reminded the NASCAR world that he is first a race car driver, winning Saturday’s inaugural O’Reilly Auto Parts 150 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in a highly spirited closing-laps battle with Zane Smith.
Ultimately, Kligerman held off the three-time race winner Smith – the two crossing the line in close formation with Kligerman’s No. 75 Henderson Racing Chevrolet taking a .119-second margin of victory in a race that concluded with all the drama expected of a road course event.
Smith – who won at Circuit of The Americas and finished runner-up at both Sonoma, Calif., and Mid-Ohio – takes a worthy consolation prize with his second-place finish Saturday. He heads into the regular-season finale in two weeks now only two points away from clinching the 2022 Camping World Truck Series regular season championship.
Saturday’s victory is the third career series win for Kligerman and first since 2017. And he becomes the series’ 17th-consecutive different winner on a road course.
“It’s hard to put into words [what this means], I was pretty emotional on the cool-down lap because this whole team, it’s like a team of second chances,” Kligerman said. “Two years ago, I thought my driving days were done. This team gave me a call, wanting to get back racing and it’s just been a steady improvement.
“It’s just unbelievable when you put a talented group of humans together, what they achieve,’’ Kligerman said of his Henderson Racing team, which employs only one full-time crew member. “And we’re doing this on absolutely a fraction of the trucks we run against.
“This is a small team that ‘could,’ but we’re not a small team that doesn’t win,’’ Kligerman shouted, turning toward the crowd. “We win.”
Corey Heim was making it a three-truck contest for the trophy, going wheel to wheel with Kligerman and Smith for what would have been an extra $50,000 Triple Truck Challenge bonus for him when his No. 51 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota suddenly lost power. That brought out the seventh caution period of the day and left the trophy to be decided in a frantic three-lap sprint by Kligerman and Smith, who each won a stage.
Kligerman, who led a race-best 56 of the 67 laps, also earned a $50,000 bonus for his win in the third and final round of the Triple Truck Challenge. Ryan Preece (Nashville) and Heim (Gateway) were the initiative’s other winners this season.
Carson Hocevar finished third with Stewart Friesen and Christian Eckes rounding out the top five. Chandler Smith, Kaz Grala, Derek Kraus and Colby Howard finished sixth through ninth with Hailie Deegan earning a 10th-place finish – her first top 10 of the 2022 season.
Mid-Ohio was especially tough for race favorites and championship contenders.
John Hunter Nemechek, who entered the race trailing Smith by only 21 points in the standings was still hoping to race for his second consecutive Camping World Truck Series regular season title. Instead, Nemechek’s No. 4 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota had mechanical problems about midway through the race.
The KBM team worked on the truck in the garage to repair a problem with third gear. Nemechek returned to the race with only 18 laps remaining and was able to make up enough ground to stay in second place in the standings – tied with teammate Chandler Smith – but now 58 points behind Zane Smith.
Reigning series champion Ben Rhodes also experienced mechanical problems mid-race and was never able to challenge up front. He finished 23rd.
Trackhouse Racing co-owner Justin Marks made his first start in the series since 2018. Marks — a former Mid-Ohio winner in Xfinity Series competition — placed 31st in the 36-truck field, exiting early after his No. 41 Niece Motorsports crashed into the Turn 4 tire barrier with 18 laps remaining.
Drivers Ty Majeski (12th), Eckes (fifth) and Hocevar (third), secured playoff berths with their results on Saturday. Ninth-place Grant Enfinger and 10th-place Matt Crafton still must battle Kraus for playoff position. The three-time series champion Crafton holds a 19-point advantage over the 20-year-old Kraus entering the final regular-season race.
The regular season concludes July 23 at Pocono Raceway with the CRC Brakleen 150 (noon ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The top 10 drivers in the standings will contend in a seven-race Playoff to determine the 2022 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion.
Note: Post-race inspection in the Camping World Trucks garage was completed without issue, confirming the official results and Kligerman’s victory. Officials indicated that no trucks were taken back to the NASCAR Research & Development Center for further inspection.
Is Atlanta another wild-card race? If it is, then a handful of drivers with only one win this season have cause to be concerned. There are already 13 winners. Throw in a revamped Atlanta, two road courses (which have proven parity this season) and the regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway, and the current playoff standings could look completely different before the Round of 16. So for drivers teetering on the right side of the bubble, Sunday’s race presents an incredible opportunity to set their destiny in stone. Get a second win and it is virtually a guaranteed playoff berth. Miss out on the chance and a driver winning below the cut line just adds to the increasing pressure down the stretch. | Playoff outlook, so far
Who’s hot? Who’s not?
Suddenly, Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric has been steadily improving the consistency he has struggled to find in his rookie year. Cindric enters Atlanta on a three-race streak of top-seven finishes and only has one sub-11 result since Darlington Raceway on May 8. We all know how prominent Team Penske’s superspeedway program has been over the years, with Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney being serial contenders. Cindric should be more comfortable this time around, despite crashing out here in the spring race. With a host of new winners shaking up the rankings, that elusive second Cup win could not come at a better time than Sunday.
On the flip side, Austin Dillon is almost certainly in a must-win situation 219 points below the playoff cutline. A moderately promising start to the season had the No. 3 car right in the mix for a handful of races. But lately, that has not been the case. Dillon has six-consecutive finishes of 11th or worse and has only one top-10 finish at Atlanta in 11 starts. Like Cindric, Dillon was also an early exit due to a wreck and will need a completely different result this time around. With the No. 8 car locked into a provisional playoff spot, the focus shifts on getting the No. 3 to join it.
Driving under the radar
Despite dominating the spring race, William Byron is not the outright favorite this weekend. Even being one of only five multi-race winners this season, Byron’s story still feels underdog-ish. Sure, his blistering pace to start the season has cooled off in recent weeks. But he has one significant advantage on his side this weekend: no practice. Only a spring notebook will give teams a chance to work out any kinks from the earlier race — one in which Byron led 111 laps. The 24 car was the one to beat from start to finish, and though the trends have favored others lately, Byron is a solid bet to be first to three wins.
Sean Gardner | Getty Images
Race-day staples ✅
Our biggest pieces of the week — get covered for race day from all angles.
• Paint Scheme Preview: Denny Hamlin brings out the Coca-Cola scheme | Pick a favorite
• Power Rankings: Is Kyle Larson rounding into his 2021 form? | Latest Cup Series driver rankings
• Fantasy Fastlane: Bubba Wallace is a must-have for your lineup | Top plays, sleepers
• NASCAR betting: Which driver is the favorite for Sunday? |BetMGM betting odds
• Backseat Drivers: How far does Tyler Reddick go in the playoffs? | Watch the debate
• Playoff Watch: How the 2022 Cup Series playoff picture is shaping up | Bubble battles, playoff locks
Catch the pack 💨
Read up on the top headlines from the week leading up to Sunday’s race.
• Inspection: Two cars lose crew member, pit-stall selection | Full report
• Joe Gibbs Racing: Organization gives update on Kyle Busch’s status | Read more
• Crucial race: Analyzing why Bubba Wallace needs to treat Sunday like Game 7 | Read more
• Crew changes: Christopher Bell and Bubba Wallace swap crew members for Sunday | Drivers give insight | More details
• Denny Hamlin: No. 11 Toyota Camry will sport Coca-Cola scheme this weekend | Read more
• 10 things: What to pack when preparing to camp out for a NASCAR race | Learn more
• Corey Lajoie: No. 7 Spire Motorsports driver aiming for Hail Mary at Atlanta | Read more • Why Tyler Reddick?: Richard Childress explains faith in the No. 8 driver | Full story
• Backseat Drivers: Is Ty Gibbs ready for the Cup Series? | Watch the show
• eNASCAR: Steven Wilson aces Road America | Results, recap
• Stacking Pennies: Corey LaJoie recaps a wild race at Road America, Ty Gibbs joins the show | Listen here
• Garage 56: Hendrick Motorsports offers insight after visiting endurance classic last month | Read more
• Winless, for now: 2022 Cup Series runners-up still searching for first win | Full list
• Speed Sport rankings: Chase Elliott stands out on another list | Read more
Get in on the action 💰
Think you know NASCAR? Put your mettle to the test with gaming, fantasy.
• The Action Network: Why you should bet Ricky Stenhouse Jr. on Sunday | Read more
• BetMGM: No clear favorite with wild, unpredictable Atlanta on the horizon | Which drivers to bet
• Featured matchup: How to bet Michael McDowell vs. Bubba Wallace | Expert’s insight
• Play it LIVE: Full guide to 2022 NASCAR Fantasy Live game | Get the FAQ
• Going all the way: 2022 Cup Series championship odds | See them here
New track layout, same storied history ⏳
Home of the Varsity and Braves country, let’s see what storied history NASCAR has in the “Peach State.”
• Do you remember?: Listing the most memorable moments at Atlanta | Relive them
• Winner, winner: All-time Cup Series winners at Atlanta | Full list
• Last season: Kurt Busch outduels Kyle in a summertime showdown for the ages | Race recap
• Race Rewind: Best 2021 video highlights from a jam-packed race on the old layout | Watch now
Fast facts ⏩
Hard-hitting, race-relevant statistics, brought to you by the experts at Racing Insights.
• Six Atlanta races ended in overtime with the most recent coming in 2016. • The race winner led over 100 laps in four of the last six Atlanta races. • Nine of the last 10 Atlanta winners got their first win of the season. • Joey Logano was passed for the win in three of the last six Atlanta races. • The last five Atlanta races were won by five different drivers.
Say what? 🎙
Notable quotes from the stars of the sport heading into Sunday’s race.
• “Atlanta was a really good race for us in the spring. Our team performed well on the new superspeedway track surface and with no practice this time around I think that should play into our hands.” — Christopher Bell, driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
• “Making the playoffs is the goal. You can’t run for a championship if you don’t make the playoffs, so we start every year before we leave to go to Daytona with a list of goals and priority number one is to do everything you can for the regular season to put yourself in a position to make the playoffs. Whether that’s on points or by winning races, we’ve done a good job throughout the year of scoring points and putting ourself in a position that typically would have had us racing our way in on points but this is a very untypical year.” — Aric Almirola, driver of the No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.
• “Old Atlanta versus new, it’s quite a different change. But now, after getting to run a race here earlier this year, I think it helps kind of transition and you see that with the weekend schedule now with qualifying and racing. Where before, we had full practice sessions. The cars have probably evolved some since [the first Atlanta race], setups and engines and aero packages and stuff within the team. So, it could be a totally different race.” — Kyle Larson, driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
See where your favorite driver will pit for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
William Byron, 24, is hopeful that this return visit to Atlanta Motor Speedway may kickstart another solid run to close out the regular season. His victory in March and a second at Martinsville Speedway only three weeks later made the Hendrick Motorsports driver the first multi-race winner of the 2022 season.
But after that April 9 win at Martinsville, Byron didn’t score another top-10 for eight weeks – a ninth-place run two months later on the Sonoma, Calif. road course. That finish – three weeks ago – is his only top-10 now in a span of 10 races.
A good showing this weekend at Atlanta would go a long way toward righting the ship for the No. 24 Chevrolet team. And there’s plenty of reasons to believe that’s possible. Byron says he’s become a student of big-track racing and concedes the right mindset really helps.
His results would indicate as much. Byron earned his first-career NASCAR Cup Series win at Daytona International Speedway in the August 2020 regular-season finale.
Seven of his 25 career top-five NASCAR Cup Series finishes – plus a pair of Xfinity Series wins – have come on tracks at least 2.5 miles (Daytona, Talladega, Ala., Pocono, Pa. and Indianapolis).
“When I was starting out, like going back to the first truck race on a superspeedway, I was really nervous, timid, didn’t make a lot of moves and I ended up getting into someone else’s crash,’’ Byron acknowledged Saturday.
“So I was just like, ‘man, this just doesn’t make any sense. I feel so timid. I feel so nervous the whole time’. So I just started to take a more aggressive approach to try and learn. Knowing that the outcome might be the same – maybe I’m going to crash or whatnot at the end of the race – but at least I’ve learned something throughout the race and don’t feel like I’m just a passenger in the pack.
“I hated that feeling of just feeling like I was going to ride around and hope for the best. That didn’t sit well for me so I just took a more aggressive approach.’’
HAMPTON, Ga. — When it was announced, it seemed one-sided.
The pit-crew unit for the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was being separated, sending front tire changer Houston Stamper and tire carrier Joe Crossen from Christopher Bell’s crew to provide support to the No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota of Bubba Wallace.
Wallace’s prevalent pit-crew struggles throughout the season have contributed to placing him in an insurmountable position from a points perspective. Not to say that his season has been perfect behind the wheel, but the late-race mishaps have been well documented.
“We’re trying to improve on all aspects of our race team,” Wallace told NASCAR.com. “[The changes are] out of my control, so I look at the vision we have as a team. We’re all trying to push the needle to be better and if this is a step in that direction, then I’m all for it.”
Wallace’s former front changer Jackson Gibbs and tire carrier Nick McBeath headed to Bell’s crew. And initially, the changes appeared to be favoring Wallace’s needs at the expense of Bell and the No. 20 team’s performance.
But Bell has a different take on the situation.
“I don’t wanna throw anybody under the bus, but it hasn’t been working what we’ve had,” Bell said in an interview Saturday. “Anybody that has paid attention to the 20 car this year would understand that the 20 car has not been amazing on pit road either.
“We have had pit-crew issues on the No. 20 as well. It hasn’t been all fun and games for us on the 20 group either. So, I think that both of us, the 23 and the 20 are looking for improvements and we have been saying what we’ve been looking for improvements … and this is a step to hopefully improve both teams.”
Bell sits eighth in the points standings, but without a win and with 13 different winners, he is the driver on the bubble and only 20 points above the cutline. The pressure to be more consistent and get the elusive win is rapidly increasing.
“Both of us have had our struggles for sure,” Bell said. “And [pit-road mishaps] cost both of us a lot of potential good finishes. I think mixing up the teams was their goal to try and obviously produce better pit stops, fewer mistakes and we’ll see if that turns out.”
Although Bell is comfortable on points, for now, Wallace is almost certainly in a must-win situation with eight races remaining in the regular season. But two of those feature superspeedway-style racing, a positive for the 2021 Talladega Superspeedway winner.
And as for his opinion on the chances at the revamped Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend, Wallace said: “It’s different. I struggled here at the old surface but it was a lot of fun to slip and slide around. It had a lot of character. But there’s two sides to it. We’re good here now, so I look at that as a good thing.”
Both restructured crews will have their first challenge Sunday (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Rain showers in the Atlanta area on Saturday ultimately canceled NASCAR Cup Series qualifying at Atlanta Motor Speedway for Sunday’s Quaker State 400 presented by Walmart (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
NASCAR’s metrics formula instead decided the grid order with Georgia native Chase Elliott starting his No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet from the pole position, alongside Floridian Ross Chastain in the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. Reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson – Elliott’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate – and Tyler Reddick will start from the second row, giving Chevrolet a lock on the top four positions on the grid.
23XI Racing’s Kurt Busch is the defending race winner. However, Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron won in the March 2022 debut of the newly-configured 1.54-mile Atlanta high-banks.
Elliott is still racing for his first victory at his home track. He has an impressive six top-10 finishes in eight starts at Atlanta with a best showing of fifth in 2017. He was sixth in this season’s spring race.
“I would love to win here,’’ Elliott said. “That would be one of the best things to do, to win at your home track. I’ve watched guys do that over the years and you can tell that means a lot to them. I think it would be very much the same for me. It would be meaningful to be able to check that box.
“We’ve been okay here. We had one really good run, I would say and the rest of them, just kind of mediocre. Now the way that it is with speedway racing, it’s a bit of a toss-up. I think anybody has a shot this weekend the way the event is now.’’
Pre-qualifying inspection in the garage is complete before Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, with the No. 15 Ford of Garrett Smithley and No. 78 Ford of BJ McLeod being the only two-time failures.
Each team will lose a crew member and pit-stall selection for the race (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, NBC Sports Live, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). There were no three-time failures.
With no practice, Saturday’s qualifying session is scheduled to be the series’ first on-track activity of the weekend. Qualifying is scheduled to begin at 11:35 p.m. ET (NBC Sports App, PRN) with coverage beginning on USA at noon.
