HAMPTON, Ga. – With a brilliant move to the inside of leader Ryan Sieg on the final lap of a second overtime, Ty Gibbs seized control of Saturday’s Nalley Cars 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway and won by 0.178 seconds over runner-up Austin Hill.
Overcoming a mistake on pit road, where he overshot his stall, Gibbs rallied to run near the front as the race reached the end of regulation and moved into overtime.
In the second extra period, which pushed the event nine laps past its scheduled distance of 163 laps, Gibbs lined up in the outside lane behind Sieg, developed a huge run off Turn 4 and steered to the inside to take the top spot as the cars approached Turn 1 for the final time.
The last lap was the only one Gibbs would lead, but it propelled him to his second victory in five starts this season and his sixth in 23 NASCAR Xfinity Series races.
“What the heck? Oh, my gosh! I didn’t expect this at all,” said Gibbs, who at age 19 already is building a formidable legacy. “That’s one where I learned a big lesson-just never give up… Now I’m going to go party with the boys — let’s go!”
On a 1.54-mile track that raced like a superspeedway, in a race that produced an event-record-tying 10 cautions for 56 laps, Hill salvaged second place after surrendering the lead to Sieg on the first attempt at overtime.
“RCR (Richard Childress Racing) built a very fast race car,” said Hill, who won the season-opening race at Daytona International Speedway. “They gave me everything I needed to win the race. I think the biggest difference was when we had that other restart, the 39 (Sieg) inched me out.
“The yellow came out. I think that was the biggest difference because I think if we could have kept the lead there and controlled it, I think we had a fast enough car to get the job done. But hats off to the 54 guys. They did a good job today. He made the right moves at the right time, and we’ll have to go on to the next one. It stings, but we’ve got to hold our heads up.”
AJ Allmendinger ran third, followed by Riley Herbst and Landon Cassill. Mason Massey, Brandon Jones, Kyle Weatherman, Sheldon Creed and Sieg completed the top 10.
Two significant streaks came to an end in Saturday’s race. Noah Gragson was collected in a wreck on the backstretch on Lap 153, stopping a string of four straight top-three finishes to start the season. In the same wreck, Justin Allgaier nosed into the outside wall and fell out of the race in 34th place, ending a streak of 16 straight top-10 results.
Josh Berry stole the first stage from JR motorsports teammate Gragson, grabbing the top spot on the final lap. Working with a new pit crew, Gragson restarted 21st after a slow stop under the stage break caution and compounded the error by scraping the Turn 2 wall four laps later.
Gragson lost a lap in the pits under green but took a wave-around to regain the lead lap during the break after the second stage, won by AJ Allmendinger. Gragson got the caution he needed on Lap 106 when the Chevrolet of Jade Buford spun sideways and collected Jeremy Clements’ Chevy in the process.
But as he was gaining ground late in the race, Gragson fell victim to the multi-car wreck on Lap 153, when Trevor Bayne, who led 38 laps, slid up in front of Allmendinger, who led a race-high 41.
Note: Post-race inspection in the Xfinity Series garage is complete, confirming Gibbs as the winner. Nos. 54, 21, 98 and 9 will be taken back to the NASCAR R&D Center for teardown and engine dyno as part of a routine inspection process
HAMPTON, Ga. – The benefits of teamwork might often make the dream work, so the saying goes, but it sometimes produces nightmares when thing go awry. Kyle Busch Motorsports’ latest dream sequence had moments of a restless, fitful sleep after a victorious but contentious Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Corey Heim, a 19-year-old Georgia native, notched his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series victory in Saturday’s Fr8 208, but it came at the expense of Kyle Busch Motorsports teammate Chandler Smith, who went from first at the white flag to a fourth-place finish at the checkers. Smith had led the previous 20 laps before Heim took command for the final circuit.
Further muddling the team dynamic, Heim’s decisive push past Smith came from another KBM campaigner – John Hunter Nemechek, who was two laps down but racing in the lead pack after early trouble. So while the other two KBM mates gave Heim’s No. 51 Toyota congratulatory nudges on the cool-down lap, Smith suggested the team harmony was in need of some counseling, saying, “We need to talk.”
“I mean, we go with the mindset where it was speedway racing today, was it not?” said Smith, who won two weeks ago in the Truck Series’ stop at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “So, went in with the mindset of, we’ve gotta stick with teammates, teammates are gonna win this race, yada yada yada. I was the only KBM teammate today. Corey helped me one time, but any other time, we never helped each other. If anything, we screwed each other. I’m the only one that really helped, and I’m not saying that to toot my own horn, I’m just being real.”
Smith said the organization had a pre-race huddle to talk strategy, predicting that Atlanta’s reconfigured layout would race more like a superspeedway. That meant a focus on using the aerodynamic draft as a helper, allowing KBM’s three-truck effort to move forward together.
James Thomas | NASCAR Digital Media
Smith said those plans were largely abandoned after the green flag waved, and his spicy radio chatter said as much after a two-truck tandem with Heim broke apart after a mid-race restart.
“I just don’t understand the thinking and the process behind it,” Smith said. “We all had a meeting before the race on working together, just like we did at Vegas. We didn’t even relatively even try to do that today, so it’s just really irritating because I’m a big believer in we’ve got to do that, we’ve got to do that. I mean, I was all on board with it all day, and then it comes to a point where I keep getting screwed over. It’s like, is it worth it? I just need to look out for our group at this point, so I don’t know.”
Heim, who was making just his fifth Truck Series start, defended the ending to his breakthrough victory.
“I think the beginning goal of the day for KBM was for a KBM truck to get to Victory Lane, so that was exactly what happened,” he said. “Nobody got wrecked and I didn’t see anything wrong with what I did at the end there. It’s my career, it’s my own path, and I’m trying to win races. Chandler did a great job of defending what he could, but like you mentioned, he was a complete sitting duck, which is totally true.
“You know, the runs you get here are insane and you just can’t really do much about it instead of trying to block, and he did but I just was ready for it. I kind of had my own game plan in my head at the end there for pulling that kind of block. So yeah, I feel like the beginning goal of the day was for a KBM truck to be in Victory Lane and luckily it was me.”
Smith didn’t mention him by name, but Nemechek played a bigger role in the outcome than a 24th-place finisher normally would. He had recovered to a competitive pace after an early wall scrape knocked him back in the order. “I want the organization to win,” Nemechek later told FOX Sports. “That’s pretty much it.”
Smith had a different version of events.
“The lapped truck ended up just dictating the finish there. He shoved him right out, right by me,” Smith said. “I mean, if it wasn’t him, it would have been a different result more than likely. I don’t know. We won’t ever know, but it could have been. That’s the thing about it. A lapped truck just shoved the guy out that won the race and then blocked everybody else that had a run, too. I get it. We’re teammates. You’re trying to help them out, but you (expletive) your other teammate. Whatever.”
HAMPTON, Ga. – Atlanta Motor Speedway’s rebranding had its dress rehearsal Saturday with plenty of new – a new banking profile, new pavement and a new style of racing that places superspeedway techniques in an intermediate-track setting.
A 50-minute NASCAR Cup Series practice session offered a taste of what Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 (3 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM) might produce at the 1.54-mile track, with tight-knit action and the effects of the aerodynamic draft holding a heavy influence. Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell called it “40 minutes of pure chaos,” saying that he had multiple hold-your-breath moments.
But the question looms about what the intensity level will look like over a 325-lap, 500-mile haul. Both man and machine may be spent.
“Honestly, I’ll be surprised if we make it that long in the pack,” said Bell, a winner at the old Atlanta layout in both the Xfinity Series and Camping World Trucks. “I don’t know. Yes, everyone else is, so I’m going to have to, but it’s going to be unlike anything we have ever seen. I can promise you that.”
The name, logos and red clay around the track remain unchanged, but the similarities run out when describing the new-look racing surface. Atlanta was last repaved during its 1997 face-lift, and the well-worn asphalt was due — overdue? — for a fresh coat.
But track officials had a vision for introducing a superspeedway-style format when re-profiling the banking from 24 to 28 degrees, and NASCAR officials acted accordingly by activating the engine/spoiler configuration typically used at Daytona and Talladega, two much larger ovals.
If Saturday’s glimpses were an indicator, that vision was executed as intended. The push and pull of lanes with aero momentum figured into the on-track action during practice, and spotters guided their drivers with the same rapid-fire directions and cues reminiscent of superspeedway radio chatter.
“I think it will be – just the tighter confines, being a mile-and-a-half … 325 laps around here is a lot,” said Kyle Busch, who starts fourth Sunday. “I think we run 188 at Talladega and 200 at Daytona, so 125 more laps going through the same thing and being packed up – being in tight conditions, you will be, probably more mentally than physically. You are going to be tired after this one.”
Busch has 11 NASCAR national-series wins here, but the years of Atlanta notes and experience for Cup Series veterans won’t have much carry-over to the new layout. Factor in the still-fresh Next Gen car – which will be in just its fifth points-paying race Sunday – and the learning will continue after the green flag drops.
If there’s anything to be learned from Saturday’s undercard, it’s that the superspeedway vibe is strong. Both races were decided by last-lap passes, and a pair of 19-year-olds were the winners – Ty Gibbs in the Xfinity Series and Corey Heim in Camping World Trucks.
Atlanta had stood out as another potential wild-card race in the season’s early going ever since the renovation project was announced last July. The Cup Series will return here for a second stop on July 10 – a 400-miler that clocks in at a scheduled 260 laps. But in short order on Saturday, Atlanta showed some of what’s to be expected from its shift in style to the superspeedway way of life – and who might appreciate it more than others.
“The guys that like speedway racing are going to enjoy what we have, and the guys that dislike it are going to really dislike it,” Bell said. “It’s intense. That … practice session was super-intense. I don’t think anybody expected the draft runs to be that big, and the pack to be that tight. It was full-blown chaos and we’ve got 500 miles of it tomorrow.”
HAMPTON, Ga. – Moments after taking the white flag in Saturday’s FR8 208 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Corey Heim powered to the inside of Kyle Busch Motorsports teammate Chandler Smith, got a push from teammate John Hunter Nemechek and held on to win his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race.
Heim’s No. 51 Toyota crossed the finish line 0.173 seconds ahead of the Toyota of Ben Rhodes, as Ty Majeski came home third and Smith slipped to fourth. Daytona International Speedway winner Zane Smith completed the top five on the repaved and reconfigured track.
“It’s awesome — I was at the right place at the right time,” said Heim, a 19-year-old from Marietta, Georgia, who won in his fifth Truck Series start. “Toyota Racing just helps us so much to get here and I’m just so glad to be here.”
Heim is racing a partial schedule and not competing for the series championship. Smith, the winner at Las Vegas Motor Speedway two weeks ago, is running a full schedule for KBM, but that didn’t seem to matter with one lap to go.
“Yeah, no team orders there,” Heim said. “I think as long as one of the KBM trucks won, that’s all that matters. So, you know, the 18 (Smith) did an awesome job defending for most of the race there and the 4 (Nemechek) stuck with me when it mattered the most.
“So I’ve got to give all the credit to John Hunter Nemechek for helping me out there. It’s just surreal. Awesome.”
Nemechek was a lap down but running with the lead pack at the finish. Smith would have preferred for Nemechek not to have influenced the outcome.
“It would have been nice to not have anybody in the middle of it — just lead-lap cars — but it is what it is,” Smith said. “I’m happy for them. Good for them. That’s their first win of the year. So it’s the first one for Corey. That’s exciting. I remember how I was being able to win the first one. It was a really cool moment. So happy for him, that whole group…
“Just sucks that it had to end like that. I wish we could have just duked it out.”
Stewart Friesen was the wire-to-wire winner of Stage 1, which ran without caution despite Hailie Deegan’s No. 1 Ford sustaining a cut tire and a subsequent fire on pit road that caused the driver to be taken to the infield care center for evaluation.
Deegan was released shortly thereafter.
After working his way from the rear of the field — thanks to a pre-race penalty for unapproved adjustments to his No. 4 KBM Toyota — Nemechek took the green/checkered flag to win Stage 2, which was interrupted by a single yellow flag for debris on the frontstretch on Lap 50.
Friesen made a strategic play in pitting under that caution and regained the lead when the trucks ahead of him in the running order came to pit road during the second stage break.
A spate of cautions and consequent restarts scrambled the running order during the final stage, as Rhodes, Heim and Smith swapped the lead.
Nemechek slapped the outside wall after a restart on Lap 107 and fell one lap down after pitting under green.
Note: Inspection in the Truck Series garage is complete with no issues, confirming Heim as the race winner.
Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway
(⏰ 3 p.m. ET | 📺 FOX | 📻 MRN, SiriusXM)
Everything you need to know for Sunday’s first trip to the newly repaved speedway, the fifth regular-season NASCAR Cup Series race of the 2022 campaign.
Race-day info 📝
Where: Hampton, Georgia Approximate start time: 3 p.m. ET TV/Radio: FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Forecast: Sunny, with a high near 66 degrees. Race distance: 325 laps | 500.5 miles Stages: 105 | 310 | 225 Competition caution: Scheduled for Lap 45 Pit-road speed: 45 mph Caution car speed: 55 mph The Purse: $8,263,045 Atlanta 101: Get the full lowdown| Updated weekend schedule
Starting lineup: See how the field lines up for Sunday Pit stalls: Assignments for Sunday | Expert pit analysis
Key things to watch 🔑
Practice and qualifying: Overall speeds in the 50-minute practice session shouldn’t tell us very much about how the track will race, especially as drivers and teams mixed up short runs in packs and long 30-lap runs. Throughout the morning and early afternoon, drivers emphasized how the track has a mix of superspeedway tendencies and traditional 1.5-mile characteristics. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. quickly found his groove in the lone Saturday Cup session and topped the overall charts. Two Toyotas, Kyle Busch and Christopher Bell, and two Fords, Harrison Burton and Joey Logano, rounded out the top five. Saturday’s qualifying session was canceled due to the need for practice after inclement weather adjusted the weekend schedule. The starting order for Sunday was determined by the NASCAR Rule Book. | Full Cup Series practice recap
Big story line: Aside from the season-opening Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum, this is the Next Gen car’s first real test at an unfamiliar track. Atlanta Motor Speedway, famed for its rough surface and chaotic (at times) cracks, is now repaved and revamped for the 2022 season and beyond, bringing with it increased banking and faster speeds. Drivers have stated throughout the week that it’s hard to know what to expect or to prepare for. But the reward for the victor remains the same — a checkered flag, trophy and secured spot (if a new 2022 winner) in the first NASCAR Playoffs of the Next Gen era. Sunday’s race is also a chance to build a solid notebook for when the series returns to Georgia in July. So while there are many unknowns heading into the weekend, one thing is for certain: There is still a lot at stake. | See the incredible track transformation unfold
Who’s hot? Who’s not?Though 2022 brings a host of new challenges, Ryan Blaney can still find comfort in the fact he shines bright at the middle-Georgia track. Blaney has three consecutive top-five finishes at Atlanta, including a win in March. With as much success as he tends to have at superspeedways, this track change should be a welcome one for the No. 12 Team Penske wheelman. He has led laps in three of the last four Atlanta races and is the active leader with a 12.4 average finish. We’ve seen the speed from Blaney all season, Sunday might be the day he puts it all together. On the flip side, Ross Chastain is arguably the hottest driver in the series right now. Coming off a string of two races inside the top three, Chastian is increasingly eager for that elusive first Cup win. But he has struggled mightily at Atlanta. Chastain has never finished higher than 14th here and has never led a lap or scored a stage point. Can the Georgia heat keep the No. 1 team’s hot streak rolling? Or will it stall out Sunday?
Driving under the radar: Based on pre-season expectations, Chastain could be the easy pick here. But Trackhouse Racing has put the sport on notice early, so let’s lean into a driver getting less attention: Austin Dillon. The No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet has flashed speed in multiple races this season, slotting in runner-up at Auto Club Speedway, 11th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and had a top-10 run going on the final lap at Phoenix Raceway before unfortunate contact with Daniel Suárez shuffled him back in the finishing order. While he doesn’t have the strongest results to show for it, the effort and pace have been there for a team that struggled throughout much of 2021. Don’t be surprised if you see him running near the front again Sunday.
The newly paved and painted track surface at Atlanta Motor Speedway | Getty Images
Race-day staples ✅
Our biggest pieces of the week — get covered for race day from all angles.
Read up on the top headlines from the week leading up to Sunday’s race.
• Expect it: ‘Full-blown chaos’ anticipated for Cup Series’ first flight at new-look Atlanta | Full story
• Rain, rain, go away: Friday’s practice sessions canceled due to weather | Adjusted schedule
• Surface update: Next Gen AMS debuts this weekend with revamped racing | Details, track changes
• Five fast facts: Atlanta spring race | Dive into the details
• Tech corner: New Atlanta brings new challenges for teams and drivers | Bozi’s breakdown
• Le Mans: Hendrick Motorsports announce pursuit of Garage 56 entry | Full release| Steve Phelps speaks| Hear from Rick Hendrick
• Jim France: Thoughts on NASCAR competing in Le Mans | Hear what he said
• First look: Chase Elliott’s new No. 9 Kelley Blue Book scheme | See it here
• Next Gen stops: Stacking Pennies talks about what to expect from JGR’s new pit-stop method | Clip from LaJoie’s podcast
• Penalty upheld: Appeals panel upholds penalties, suspensions for two separate incidents | No. 7 team suspensions| Learn more
• Next Gen nuances: See how NASCAR is bringing the Next Gen cars to the track | Camaro | Mustang |Camry
• GEICO presents NASCAR Returns: Women leading the way | Celebrate Women’s History Month
• eNASCAR: Steven Wilson holds off drivers, wins at Atlanta |See exciting finish
Get in on the action 💰
Think you know NASCAR? Put your mettle to the test with gaming, fantasy.
NASCAR Creative Design
• Play it LIVE: Full guide to 2022 NASCAR Fantasy Live game | Get the FAQ
• BetMGM: Betting the clean slate for new-look Atlanta |Expert insight
• Prices, lines: Value tough to find as oddsmakers price Atlanta like a superspeedway | Read more
• Fantasy: A lot of unknowns for Atlanta, save Kyle Larson | Watch the weekend breakdown
• Weekly props: Who scores more points at Atlanta — JGR or SHR? | Make your picks
• The Action Network: Best early bet for Atlanta | See who it is
• Make your pick: Better bet — Chase Briscoe or Tyler Reddick? | Compare and choose
• Going all the way: NASCAR betting: 2022 Cup Series championship odds | See them here
What happens in Atlanta… 🍑
Before we get a taste of the new Atlanta Motor Speedway, take a look back at the track’s storied history.
• Pace out front: Top 10 lap leaders at Atlanta Motor Speedway | Who’s led the most? • Remember when: Memorable NASCAR moments at Atlanta Motor Speedway | Pick a favorite • Earned, not given: All-time winners at Atlanta Motor Speedway | See who tops the list • Repaved and ready: Atlanta Motor Speedway’s track reprofile journey | Transformation photos • Memory lane: Ryan Blaney passes Kyle Larson down the stretch to win | 2021 race recap
Fast facts ⏩
Hard-hitting, race-relevant statistics, brought to you by the experts at Racing Insights.
• The last time Atlanta Motor Speedway was repaved was 1997. • Kevin Harvick led the most laps in six of the last nine Atlanta races, but only went on to win twice.
• In the last three Atlanta races, the final green flag stretch has been 90 or more laps.
• Ford’s only 1.5-mile track win in the last 11 races came when Ryan Blaney won in March 2021.
• Eight of the last nine Atlanta winners got their first win of the season.
Say what? 🎙
Notable quotes from the stars of the sport heading into Sunday’s race.
Meg Oliphant | Getty Images
• “I think if you think about where NASCAR is, the momentum we had in ’20 and ’21, but for those of you who have been at the race track in ’22, there’s a new sense of energy and enthusiasm to the sport that the sport hasn’t had in a long, long time, as evidenced by what happened at the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum. The centerpiece of that wasn’t just that amazing venue, it was the Next Gen car. If you think about the racing we’ve seen with the Next Gen car in these five races, there’s something special that’s happening here. We are, as a sport, trying to look at things that are unique and different, puts us apart. I think that’s exactly what we’re doing. That’s what this opportunity is.” — NASCAR President Steve Phelps on the start to the season and new opportunities to grow the sport.
• “I think the goal has been to try and find some fall off everywhere we’ve gone, and I think Goodyear has done a really good job of that at a lot of places. With new asphalt at Atlanta and speeds as high as they are and loads as high as they are, I don’t know what kind of box that puts them in. I would say that we ran through a bunch of different compounds, but I don’t know that we got a good read on what we’d expect for fall off or where the grip would go. I would say that bigger thing that came up across the three drivers that were there was not so much sliding tires as much as chattering. New asphalt, when it gives up, it goes to a chatter more than a slide and just trying to hang on.” — Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford, on tackling the unknowns at Atlanta this weekend.
• “We are heading to Atlanta blind with the new car and new track surface, none of our notes will apply. It is an intermediate track that is going to race like a superspeedway. We are going to go there and put our Daytona and Talladega hat on and see if we can make it to the end. The Toyota group has some notes from the test to look at so we’ll be using that a lot. The first practice will be interesting to see the grip level of the race track, especially with all three series there throughout the weekend.” — Christopher Bell, driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, on balancing expectations for Atlanta.
NASCAR Cup Series drivers finally got to experience the repaved and reconfigured Atlanta Motor Speedway on Saturday and wasted no time getting acquainted.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. set the fastest lap at 186.616 mph (29.708 seconds) as NASCAR takes its superspeedway-style package to the 1.54-mile track in Hampton, Georgia.
The action on-track highlighted elements frequently seen at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway. Drivers practiced in large groups of cars, racing side-by-side while utilizing the aerodynamic draft created by high speeds and the 7-inch spoiler on the rear of the cars.
Early in the session, Kyle Larson dove to the inside of Brad Keselowski entering Turn 3 and lost front traction, sliding up the track and nearly into Keselowski’s door. Both drivers avoided contact and carried on. There were no incidents in the 50-minute session.
Throughout the series’ lone practice of the weekend, drivers were racing side-by-side and competed three-wide through the higher-banked corners, steepened to 28 degrees from its previous 24 degrees while the turns were also narrowed to 40 feet from 55 feet.
A pack of roughly 20 cars rumbled atop the new pavement midway through the session as drivers attempted to dissect what moves were necessary, which of them worked and which were unusable.
Behind Stenhouse, Kyle Busch, Christopher Bell, Harrison Burton and Joey Logano rounded out the top five in top single-lap speeds. Completing the top 10 were Michael McDowell, Justin Haley, Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr. and Cody Ware.
Friday’s on-track activity at Atlanta Motor Speedway has been canceled due to weather in the Hampton, Georgia area.
All three NASCAR national series were scheduled to practice, starting with the Camping World Truck Series at 3:05 p.m. ET. The Xfinity Series was set for 4:05 p.m. ET, with the Cup Series wrapping up the day’s work at 5:05 p.m. ET.
NASCAR also canceled Saturday’s qualifying sessions in order to get practice in. Chase Briscoe will lead the Cup Series field to green Sunday. The lineup was set by the rulebook.
The Cup Series’ practice is now set for 12:40 p.m. ET on Saturday. The Camping World Truck Series (10:40 a.m. ET) and Xfinity Series (11:40 a.m. ET) will practice before.
Rain hit the newly repaved and reconfigured 1.54-mile track well before haulers unloaded and continued into the afternoon with no clearing in sight.
A breakdown of the upcoming races:
— Camping World Truck Series, Saturday at 2:30 p.m. ET
— Xfinity Series, Saturday at 5 p.m. ET
— Cup Series, Sunday at 3 p.m. ET
The forecast for the weekend looks much clearer than Friday’s radar.
A five-time NASCAR Camping World Truck Series winner in 2021, John Hunter Nemechek would like nothing better than to finish without incident in Saturday’s Fr8 208 at Atlanta Motor Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
So far this season, the closing laps of races have been unkind to the driver of the No. 4 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota. Nemechek started second and first, respectively, at Daytona International Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but late crashes dropped him to finishes of 24th and 25th in the two events.
Nemechek participated in the January tire test at Atlanta. Since then, NASCAR has instituted the yellow-line rule for superspeedways at the 1.54-mile track, prohibiting passing on the apron.
“A lot of things have changed since we were there at the tire test, double yellow-line rule now,” Nemechek said. “A lot of changes going back…
“The first laps in a pack may be at the start of the race, so a lot to learn, a lot to figure out in a short time, but hopefully it’ll be fun, and hopefully we can bring home our first checkered flag of the year.”
Nemechek is one of three former Atlanta winners entered in Saturday’s race. The others are Matt Crafton and Grant Enfinger.
Austin Cindric has made a tradition out of planting the checkered flag into whatever piece of infield grass he can grab after a victory. This year, he took that habit straight from the NASCAR Xfinity Series to Cup in the season-opening Daytona 500.
It may as well have been a stake driven right into his claim of the Sunoco Rookie of the Year Award. For fellow first-year driver Harrison Burton, it took an otherwise friendly competition within the competition and set the bar for what will be required to wear those laurels at season’s end.
“We’ve had a lot of fun with it,” said Burton, in his first year with the Wood Brothers’ No. 21 team. He’s vying for top rookie honors with Team Penske’s Cindric and Front Row Motorsports’ Todd Gilliland. “It’s been fun to kind of go back and forth and joke around with each other about it and use it as some competitive edge. And then Austin goes off and wins the first race of the year, and that kind of made it harder for us because then we had to go match that.
“So, which is cool, it’s exciting. I mean, there’s been a lot of new winners this year. Every race has had a different winner, and there’s been some first-time winners with Austin and Chase (Briscoe), and (Daniel) Suarez was close. So I think there’s room there to do it. You’re just going to have to have a spectacular day.”
For Burton, those days have been admittedly tough to come by just four races into the 2022 campaign. Crash-related exits in the first two races – including a roof ride in the Daytona opener – created an early deficit for the 21-year-old driver in the Cup Series standings. A 16th-place run at Las Vegas helped stem the slide, but Burton scrapped for just 29th in the final order last weekend at Phoenix.
A Stage 2 wall scrape didn’t help Burton’s cause, but the No. 21 bunch fought handling adjustments over the course of the 312-lapper. The result prompted team president Eddie Wood to say post-race, “we’re a lot better race team than what folks saw today.”
Some degree of learning curve was to be expected this year with a new driver, a new car and the first race of the season on that track type – the 1-mile Phoenix oval. Burton says the underlying confidence from the organization remains, and it’s helped to buoy spirits amidst the difficult early going.
“Let’s be honest, it’s not been a good start. We’ve had a lot of crashes, things that were out of our control, and there were some weekends that were in our control,” Burton says. “And Phoenix was one that, that’s kind of on us, and that’s one of the harder ones to swallow, I think, is when you just run really poorly. But I feel like that it wasn’t something that is not fixable.
“It’s just sometimes you have those days in racing, and I’ve had nothing but great support from the Wood Brothers so far, and that hasn’t changed at all. If they still believe in me, then I still believe in myself. Those are some of the legends in our sport, and they know what they’re talking about. So I think internally, there’s still a great belief in our team, and one bad race isn’t going to change that.”
The challenges promise to continue this weekend at new-look Atlanta Motor Speedway for Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 (3 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The intermediate-sized track has undergone a full repave and a significant reconfiguration, with steeper banking and a narrower racing surface.
Teams will use the superspeedway rules package typically reserved for the larger layouts of Daytona and Talladega, leading to wide-ranging conjecture about how the track will race. “It’s like a super-intermediate,” Burton said with a laugh. “That’s what I’m going with.”
Whatever the terminology for the newfangled Atlanta, Burton says he expects a tall test for rookies and veterans alike.
“Yeah, it’s a lot of unknown, that’s for sure,” Burton says. “It’s more unknown than known, and especially for us not having gone to the (previous tire) test, it’s pretty hard to really know what to prepare. It’s kind of its own animal now, so what race do you watch to prepare? What do you do to study? What can you do? There’s been some theories that we’ve had, and we’re certainly trying to prepare just as hard as we normally would, but it’s hard without a lot of material.
“So there’s a lot of unknown, and I’m expecting it to be a really challenging race because of that. A lot of learning on the fly, but you know, fortunately, we’re kind of in the habit of doing that this year. It’s been what this year is all about.”
