By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service

Inclement weather cancels Busch Light Pole Qualifying, Tyler Reddick to lead the field on Sunday

HAMPTON, Ga. _ Last week’s DAYTONA 500 champion Tyler Reddick will start Sunday’s Autotrader 400 (3 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at EchoPark Speedway from the same position he finished last Sunday’s season-opening race – out front.

Tyler Reddick. (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)

Rain showers forced the cancellation of Saturday’s Busch Light Pole Qualifying session at the Atlanta 1.5-miler which put the 23XI Racing driver on pole in the No. 45 Toyota and Team Penske driver Joey Logano on the outside of the front row in the No. 22 Ford.

HYAK Motorsports’ Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott and Roush-Fenway-Keselowski owner-driver Brad Keselowski round out the top five on the 38-car grid – a special data metric calculated by NASCAR decides the starting order when qualifying is cancelled due to weather.

Defending race winner Christopher Bell smiled when asked if the lack of qualifying affected his expectations of the race. He won last year at Atlanta after starting 32nd on the grid and went on to win the next two NASCAR Cup Series races. The driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota could use a good run Sunday after being collected in a crash and finishing 35th at Daytona.

“Pit selection is always an issue for the Camrys, especially my Camry here at Atlanta but the way the metric kind of shook out I feel like I would have qualified right where I am anyway,’’ Bell said with a smile.

“[Qualifying] is not a factor here,’’ Bell added of his chances to move forward on Sunday. “I don’t know why, but we – the Toyotas – tend to qualify worse here than we do at Daytona or Talladega. The biggest thing is just the pit stall selection.’’

Suarez confidence level always high at Atlanta

Spire Motorsports driver Daniel Suarez shared he always arrives in Atlanta feeling particularly optimistic. The 34-year old from Monterrey, Mexico won the NASCAR Cup Series race here in February, 2024 – and had runner-up finishes in the races immediately before and afterward. And he’s got a top-10 at Atlanta even going back to NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series days.

Suarez is coming off a 13th place finish at Daytona in his debut in the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet and will start 12th on Sunday’s grid.

“Really, since before the configuration, I used to do pretty well here,’’ Suarez said. “I think, honestly, half of the battle is mental. You know, when you come into this place, and you’re already like, oh man, there is a high chance I’m going to crash, I feel like there is a good percentage that you’re going to crash.

“So, I think I just try to enjoy it and have fun. I’ve been fortunate enough that I have had good race cars here, as well. It’s not just myself… it’s an entire army behind me. I’ve been fortunate enough to have good race cars here in the past, and we’ve been able to take advantage of that.

“It’s a combination that you have to have between driver and the car,” Suarez added. “And I believe that we’re going to have another shot at it tomorrow because based on everything I have seen from Spire Motorsports, they were also very, very sporty here. It’s been a lot of fun to do our homework preparing into this weekend.”

Reddick DAYTONA 500 Victory Tour

Last week’s Daytona 500 winner Reddick was still smiling after claiming the biggest victory of his career. Reddick is coming off a whirlwind media tour across the country. His stops included national outlets with appearances on traditional sports and even non-racing shows such as the “Kelly and Mark” talk show, where he accidentally dropped his DAYTONA 500 winner’s ring. Reddick visited the top of the Empire State Building and was a regular on talk shows across the country.

Interestingly, the driver of the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota said it was probably his interactions with the non-racing outlets this week that he enjoyed the most.

“It’s been a lot of fun,’’ Reddick said. “I think getting to go to these places and do these things, that part is cool, but, for me, what I’ve enjoyed the most is kind of having the opportunity to, whether it was going on First Things First, or just a number of the shows, getting to interact with the analyst or the anchors that didn’t know a lot about racing.

“They were genuinely curious about racing, whether it was because they were intrigued by the finish, and how exciting it looked, and just how chaotic it was, or the number of athletes that were drawn to understand and learn more because they saw Michael (Jordan, co-owner, 23XI Racing) in Victory Lane, and he’s the owner of the 45 [car] and he won the 500.

“I think that for me was probably the part I enjoyed the most – is getting to like tell them about Michael and to tell them about NASCAR and like what our world is kind of like, among all else. That was probably the part that I enjoyed a lot.”

SVG’s oval learning curve

The reigning NASCAR Cup Series road racing master, Trackhouse Racing’s Shane Van Gisbergen is reminded why he’s a world-class driver. Much of his early career was spent winning road races and championships in the Austalian SuperCars Series, and now as a fulltime driver in the NASCAR ranks, he has had to learn the art of winning on ovals.

The 36-year old New Zealander – in his second full season in the sport’s highest level – said last week’s DAYTONA 500 was an important step forward both in terms of his performance on the 2.5-mile Daytona track and his work overall to bringing his oval results more in line with his massive success every time the series goes to a road course.

Although he took a 30th place finish at Daytona in the No. 97 Trackhouse Chevrolet after being collected in a multi-car accident not of his own doing, he qualified an impressive 13th place and led three laps mid-way through the race. He ran among the top-10 for much of the early-going.

“I feel like every time I race on this style [of track] I get more comfortable at this stuff, it’s so different,’’ Van Gisbergen said Saturday at Atlanta, where he will 28th on Saturday. “Then you can be innocent and be involved in a crash like last week and not much you can do about that.

“It’s still a lot of fuel-saving, but even when the field went, I feel like we were genuinely fast and able to stay up there and I put myself in decent spots to get the pushes and not get hung-out. Definitely improved there. It was fun to run up front most of the race.

“It’s just time getting better and I think our cars are getting faster too and that helps. People see your name up there more often. It takes time for people to trust you at tracks like that, I feel like people are working with me more now. I feel like I’m getting better at that.

“I remember my first race at Talladega, every time I’d get in there, they’d put me three wide or four-wide and put me to the back. I feel like that’s happening less often now.”