Cars in the field: 38
Pole: Chandler Smith (16)
Outside pole: John Hunter Nemechek (20)
Stages: 40-40-83
Weather: 88 degrees, feels like 96, mostly cloudy, 4 mph win with gusts to 7 mph
I see dark clouds on the horizon during Cup qualifying though the sun is shining at the track. On the other side of town, it is cloudy here during Cup qualifying.PRN says they’re going to have new pit road procedures at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The sun keeps going in and out here. Not looking like rain currently at the Xfinity series drivers do pre-race interviews. PRN’s Doug Rice said Cole Custer was upset about being sent down to the Xfinity series and has a chip on his shoulder. I imagine he would be disappointed. I also do not believe he was remotely ready for the upper series from the time he moved into the Truck series. He had a lot to learn and he’s not a quick learner. He needed at least 2-3 more years in the Truck series to learn how to race there. Then he needed time in the Xfinity series to learn how to race there. He might have been ready to begin learning how to race in the Cup series a couple of years from now if he had gotten the time he needed in Trucks and Xfinity. I don’t think he’s the driver he thinks he is, nor the driver he wants to be. With the rush to Cup I wonder if he will ever actually become the driver he
would’ve been if he had moved at the best pace for his development rather than getting moved too quickly due to the trend at the time in NASCAR.
Under caution the pit road speed is 45 mph. Under green the speed limit is 90 mph on the apron. PRN says they’ve only practiced that once.
Caution on lap 28 of 163 for a spin by Parker Kligerman (48).
Riley Herbst (98) wins stage one.
Josh Berry (8) led 34 laps, but Herbst got him at the line.
Caution on lap 50 of 163 for a spin by Parker Retzlaff (31).
Caution on lap 62 of 163 for an incident involving Greg Van Alst (44). Of course NBC missed the incident. From the damage it appears Van Alst smacked the wall. The 08 of Mason Massey also has damage and may have been involved in the incident.
PRN reports that Van Alst (44) said over the radio that it just snapped loose on him.
It’s always a bit disappointing when PRN has the race call for numerous reasons – one of which is due to the fact their call is about 2 laps behind the television broadcast. If it’s a race where I’m attempting to listen to the radio call and watch what they show of the racing action it’s not possible due to the timing difference. Another issue with depending on the PRN broadcast is how often they are simply wrong when reporting on incidents. They frequently say what happened and then after a few television replays they will revise what happened. Often I’m arguing with the radio because what occurred was clearly shown and was different than their initial reporting. That’s something that happens much less often during MRN broadcasts.
The television broadcast is alternating between the crap coverage and attempting to show the field racing. Unfortunately their attempt to show the field racing seems mainly to utilize a blimp shot, which is much less than ideal, but better than the crap shots, like when Sheldon Creed was battling door-to-door with Georgian Ryan Sieg (39) and they decided to show a shot that provided an up-close view of the ‘passenger’ side of the car and the window net and the door of a car in the distance. Completely useless shot that showed nothing of interest and certainly nothing relevant of the hard racing that was occurring. Eventually they went back to the blimp shot so at least the viewer could see the tops of the cars and get an idea of the racing. With the small numbers on the cars, the darkness – it’s night, and the distance, I can’t tell exactly what’s going on from those high-overhead shots, nor who is involved, but I can at least see the view from 80,000 feet and have a generic over
view of the action. The switched from the side-view to the overhead view – then they made a replay cover most of the screen real estate with the live racing in a tiny window on the lower right corner of the screen. Bunny was yelling at the tv because she was so frustrated. She had gotten into the battle between Creed, Sieg and Hill. She was cheering for Creed and Sieg, then was suddenly unable to see the action. I miss decent race coverage in general. I miss it more with NBC since their broadcasts are consistently awful.
Sheldon Creed (2) holds off Austin Hill (21) to win stage two.
Restarting on lap 86 of 163.
On lap 87 of 164 Ty Gibbs (19) heads to pit road with sparks showing on the right side of the car, as a big wreck breaks out involving Ryan Sieg (39), Kyle Weatherman (36), Sheldon Creed (2), Sam Mayer (1) and others.
The 9 of Brandon Jones (9) tapped Ryan Seig (39) and Riley Herbst (98). Herbst went into the wall and Sieg was sent spinning in front of the field collecting the 78. They were in front of the 1 who had nowhere to go and crashed into Sieg. It looked like Jones may have been hit from behind causing him to get out of shape and hit both Herbst and Sieg while getting it gathered back up.
NASCAR digital indicates Herbst (98) had a flat tire, slowed, and the field got bottled up behind him resulting in a 10 car wreck.
Restarting on lap 96 of 163.
On lap 97 of 163 Josh Berry (8) is training smoke. It appears to be a tire rub.
Caution on lap 99 of 163 for Kyle Weatherman (36) sitting smoking with a flat right front, a lot of damage and a fire under the hood on pit road.
Riley Herbst (98) said he knew the tire was down and he “probably dumped off the gas too fast”.
Restarting on lap 108 of 163 with Justin Haley (10) and Daniel Hemric (11) up front.
The grandstands look pretty empty in those far overhead shots.
It’s storming on the northeast side of Atlanta. The track is south of the city.
On lap 111 of 163 the top ten is single file. Austin Hill (21) passed Daniel Hemric (11) for second and they resumed the single-file parade.
This has now degenerated into a typical Atlanta Xfinity series race with a lot of single-file and occasionally someone will try to race for a second then drop back in line. In other words basically a boring parade.
The 24 of Parker Chase spins on lap 159 of 163 and the race stays green. He didn’t bring out the caution. Parker Kligerman and Parker Retzlaff brought out caution flags earlier in the event. Parker Chase was the only Parker in the field who has not brought out one.
Caution on lap 160 of 163 for a spin by Austin Hill (21) with help from Parker Kligerman (48). It doesn’t look like he touched Hill, but Kligerman was so close to Hill’s bumper it disturbed the air and away the Hill car went.
Joe Graf Jr (38) is being pushed away from pit road. PRN reports they can’t get the car restarted.
Restarting in overtime with Justin Haley (10) and John Hunter ‘JHN’ Nemechek (20), on the front row followed by Chandler Smith (16), Parker Kligerman (48), Daniel Hemric (11), Justin Allgaier (7), Brett Moffitt (25) and Cole Custer (00).
PRN is preaching the fuel mileage game since most of the field fueled up with the idea of saving fuel to make the distance.
JHN gets the early jump. They string out single-file behind him.
JHN (20) wins easily. No pressure, no excitement.
Chandler Smith (16) runs out of gas.
That was a mediocre race. It had a bit of interest when Creed (2) and Sieg (39) were racing to hold off Hill (21). Sieg and Hill are both Georgia natives. Once they were out of the event the racing seemed to end and it became a boring parade. Fuel mileage races can be entertaining with the right call. PRN and NBC do not have the broadcasters to do the job. So fuel mileage races are boring overall.