{"id":37601,"date":"2022-03-19T14:10:21","date_gmt":"2022-03-19T19:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=37601"},"modified":"2022-03-20T13:10:31","modified_gmt":"2022-03-20T18:10:31","slug":"nascar-saturday-atlanta-notebook-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/19\/nascar-saturday-atlanta-notebook-2\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Saturday Atlanta Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer<\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NASCAR Cup practice predictive of pack racing at Atlanta on Sunday<\/b><\/p>\n

HAMPTON, Ga. \u2013 Saturday\u2019s NASCAR Cup Series practice answered a lot of questions about the nature of racing at Atlanta Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Joey Logano, driver of the #22 Shell Pennzoil Ford, and Kyle Busch, driver of the #18 M&M’s Toyota, drive during practice for the NASCAR Cup Series Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 19, 2022 in Hampton, Georgia. (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

With NASCAR\u2019s superspeedway competition package in place for Sunday\u2019s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at the 1.54-mile track  (3 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)., Cup drivers quickly gravitated toward drafting in large, organized packs.<\/p>\n

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. topped the speed chart with a lap at 186.616 mph, edging Kyle Busch (186.390 mph) and Christopher Bell (186.321 mph).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you saw in practice is really what you\u2019re going to expect,\u201d said Stenhouse, who laid down the fastest time on his 41st and final lap of the session.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think the speeds were going to be as fast as they were\u2026 One mistake and you\u2019re going to wipe out just about the entire field, if it\u2019s at the front.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Stenhouse and Bell expect white-knuckled, close-quarters competition in Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found myself holding my breath several times,\u201d Bell said. \u201cIt\u2019s a full-blown speedway race, for sure. It\u2019s going to be unlike anything we\u2019ve ever seen, I can promise you that. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was full-blown chaos, and we\u2019ve got 500 miles of it tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan Blaney\u2019s comfort level in new Next Gen car is growing <\/b><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no arguing that defending Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 winner Ryan Blaney has shown excellent speed this season.<\/p>\n

He simply hasn\u2019t had results that reflect the strength of his cars.<\/p>\n

Blaney\u2019s fourth-place finishes at Daytona and Phoenix sandwiched results of 18th and 36th at Fontana and Las Vegas, respectively.<\/p>\n

As the season has progressed, Blaney has grown more comfortable with the feel of the new Next Gen race car, but he\u2019s still learning its nuances.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still feel like everyone is still getting comfortable,\u201d Blaney said. \u201cThere are always things you can learn, no matter what car it is for how long you\u2019ve driven a certain race car, but I feel like my comfort level is pretty decent now.  You\u2019re still learning things every single week, but going to three very different tracks on the West Coast, you kind of understood what the cars liked, what they wanted, what they didn\u2019t want, what you could or couldn\u2019t do in them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that was a big help having those three races out there at different tracks, and you\u2019re still learning on what changes do what and how much to change, and raceability of those things\u2026 They drive and they race really well, so that\u2019s been nice.  You\u2019re never going to be fully comfortable, but you\u2019re just trying to get a little more comfortable than everybody else quicker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kurt Busch hopes to go from last to first at Atlanta<\/b><\/p>\n

On July 11, 2021 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Kurt Busch took the lead from Kyle Busch with 25 laps left and beat his brother to the finish line by 1.237 seconds.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Kurt Busch, driver of the #45 Monster Energy Toyota, enters his car in the garage area during practice for the NASCAR Cup Series Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 19, 2022 in Hampton, Georgia. (Photo by Mike Mulholland\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Within hours of Kurt Busch\u2019s victory, track workers at the 1.54-mile speedway began demolition work for the ultimate repaving and reprofiling of the layout.<\/p>\n

The result, completed in December, included new asphalt and banking in the corners increased from 24 to 28 degrees. As fast as the track promised to be, NASCAR adopted a reduced-horsepower superspeedway package for Sunday\u2019s maiden NASCAR Cup Series event.<\/p>\n

Busch, a four-time winner at Atlanta, was the last driver to win on Atlanta\u2019s degraded asphalt. He would like nothing better than to be the first to win on the transformed venue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would be a dream come true in a sense with this situation,\u201d Busch said Saturday before Cup practice. \u201cAny time you can win\u2014I would call this\u2014an inaugural style event, it\u2019s labeled for a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe old track and the character here, I\u2019ll miss it. I\u2019ll miss it after racing on it for so many years, but this is a brand-new AMS, and this is a brand-new type of feel and sequence on what it\u2019s going to take to win. In the driver\u2019s mind, and in a team\u2019s mind, this is hyped up as an inaugural event.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer NASCAR Wire Service   NASCAR Cup practice predictive of pack racing at Atlanta on Sunday HAMPTON, Ga. \u2013 Saturday\u2019s NASCAR Cup Series practice answered a lot of questions about the nature of racing at Atlanta Motor Speedway. With NASCAR\u2019s superspeedway competition package in place for Sunday\u2019s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":37587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[52,16],"class_list":["post-37601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-atlanta-motor-speedway","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/GettyImages-1386517192-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1706&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-9Mt","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37601"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37603,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37601\/revisions\/37603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}