Rain showers within the Atlanta space on Saturday finally cancelled NASCAR Cup Collection qualifying at Atlanta Motor Speedway for Sunday’s Quaker State 400 offered by Walmart (3 p.m. ET, USA Community, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Season homeowners factors as an alternative determined the grid order with Georgia native Chase Elliott beginning his No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet from the pole place, alongside Floridian Ross Chastain within the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. Reigning NASCAR Cup Collection champion Kyle Larson – Elliott’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate – and Tyler Reddick will begin from the second row giving Chevrolet a lock on the highest 4 positions on the grid.
23XI Racing’s Kurt Busch is the defending race winner. Nonetheless, Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron gained within the March 2022 debut of the newly-configured 1.54-mile Atlanta high-banks.
Elliott remains to be racing for his first victory at his residence monitor. He has a formidable six top-10 finishes in eight begins at Atlanta with a greatest displaying of fifth in 2017. He was sixth on this season’s spring race.
“I’d like to win right here,’’ Elliott mentioned. “That will be among the finest issues to do, to win at your property monitor. I’ve watched guys try this through the years and you may inform meaning so much to them. I believe it could be very a lot the identical for me. It could be significant to have the ability to verify that field.
“We’ve been okay right here. We had one actually good run, I’d say and the remainder of them, simply form of mediocre. Now the best way that it’s with speedway racing, it’s a little bit of a toss-up. I believe anyone has a shot this weekend the best way the occasion is now.’’
BACK TO FORM
Byron, 24, is hopeful that this return go to to Atlanta could kickstart one other stable run to shut out the common season. His victory in March and a second at Martinsville, Va., solely three weeks later made the Hendrick Motorsports driver the primary multi-race winner of the 2022 season.
However after that April 9 win at Martinsville, Byron didn’t rating one other top-10 for eight weeks – a ninth-place run two months afterward the Sonoma, Calif. highway course. That end – three weeks in the past – is his solely top-10 now in a span of 10 races.
displaying this weekend at Atlanta would go a good distance towards righting the ship for the No. 24 Chevrolet workforce. And there’s loads of cause to consider that’s attainable. Byron says he’s develop into a scholar of huge monitor racing and concedes the suitable mindset actually helps.
His outcomes would point out as a lot. Byron earned his profession first his NASCAR Cup Collection win at Daytona Worldwide Speedway within the August 2020 common season finale.
Seven of his 25 profession prime 5 NASCAR Cup Collection finishes – plus a pair of Xfinity Collection wins – have come on tracks a minimum of 2.5 miles (Daytona, Talladega, Ala., Pocono, Pa. and Indianapolis).
“Once I was beginning out, like going again to the primary truck race on a superspeedway, I used to be actually nervous, timid, didn’t make loads of strikes and I ended up stepping into another person’s crash,’’ Byron acknowledged Saturday.
“So I used to be similar to, ‘man, this simply doesn’t make any sense. I really feel so timid. I really feel so nervous the entire time’. So I simply began to take a extra aggressive method to try to be taught. Understanding that the result is perhaps the identical – possibly I’m going to crash or whatnot on the finish of the race – however a minimum of I’ve discovered one thing all through the race and don’t really feel like I’m only a passenger within the pack.
“I hated that feeling of simply feeling like I used to be going to trip round and hope for the most effective. That didn’t sit properly for me so I simply took a extra aggressive method.’’
XFINITY SERIES QUALIFYING
The NASCAR Xfinity Collection qualifying at Atlanta Motor Speedway was cancelled Saturday morning as properly because of poor climate circumstances with the beginning lineup for Saturday afternoon’s Alsco Uniforms 250 (5 p.m. ET, USA Community, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) set in response to homeowners’ factors.
That places four-race winner, driver of the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, Ty Gibbs within the pole place. He’ll begin the race alongside JR Motorsports’ Josh Berry within the No. 8 JRM Chevrolet.
Present NASCAR Xfinity Collection championship chief A.J. Allmendinger, who holds a slim nine-point benefit on Gibbs, will begin third within the No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet alongside Gibbs’ JGR teammate Brandon Jones within the No. 19 Toyota.
Gibbs gained at Atlanta in March – main solely the final lap in an time beyond regulation end.
CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES
Corey Heim will begin one of many largest races of his profession from the pole place, taking the No. 1 qualifying slot within the No. 51 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota on the Mid-Ohio Sports activities Automotive Course, the place the vehicles race within the Inaugural O’Reilly Auto Components 150 at the moment (1:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Heim, a two-race winner already in a restricted 2022 schedule, stands to earn a giant payday ought to he declare the trophy on the 2.258-mile, 15-turn highway course in Lexington, Ohio. A winner two-weeks in the past at Gateway, Unwell., Heim can accumulate a $150,000 bonus as a part of the Triple Truck Problem with one other victory within the third and last race of that fashionable incentive program. Any driver that wins this week earns an additional $50,000.
Heim begins alongside Parker Kligerman within the No. 75 Henderson Motorsports Chevrolet. A well-liked NASCAR broadcaster, that is the most effective sequence begin for Kligerman this 12 months. Carson Hocevar and John Hunter Nemechek roll off from the second row.
Present championship chief Zane Smith – who has a highway course win at Circuit of the Americas and a runner-up at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway this season – will begin 13th within the No. 38 Entrance Row Motorsports Ford.
Justin Marks, the one former Mid-Ohio winner within the area – taking a trophy within the 2016 Xfinity Collection race there – will begin eighth within the No. 41 Niece Motorsports Chevrolet.
