Chase Elliott prepares to drive during practice for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Folds of Honor Quiktrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images
Last Sunday, Chase Elliott saw his Daytona 500 hopes come to an end when he was gathered up in a multi-car crash a handful of laps from the end of the race, leaving him with a disappointing 17th place finish.
But that was last week. This week, the Dawsonville, Georgia native is ready to try to get a better feel on the early 2019 season with a home stand at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
“I enjoy coming down here,” said Elliott. “I’ve been racing here for a long time, raced a lot of Legend cars and Bandolero races here, so it’s a special place to me. Home race track, as close as I’m going to get to the house I guess, so that is always nice. It’s cool to kind of have that hometown crowd feel is always neat here too.”
Elliott was 22nd fastest in qualifying, but that comes as the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series tries out the new rules package that has many anticipating a different kind of racing than we’ve seen at Atlanta in the past.
“Well, I think you just don’t know how to approach the weekend,” he said. “You don’t know how much time to spend in race trim on Friday’s and how much time to spend in qualifying trim, I think that was the big one today is how do we split up this practice and make sure we are using the time effectively. I think that is a big one as time goes on is how much time do, we need to spend in qualifying versus race and then on Sunday seeing how close or not we are to hitting it. It’s going to continue to develop and it’s such a different complexion to Friday than what is has been in year’s past.
“I’m very curious to see how that evolves and like I said, I think Atlanta is just different in general because there are not a lot of surfaces this old. Which is what makes Atlanta fun.”
Elliott said he doesn’t know if Sunday’s race will look different or not.
“I think it has potential to look different for sure, especially at the beginning of a run. Depending upon how long the run is. Honestly, hard to say. I could see the race track being wider. I could see the top lane and the middle being a more viable option than what is has been in the past, but I could also be wrong there too. I only made eight laps today, so I really don’t know.”
Martin Truex, Jr. Ready For Atlanta Challenge
Martin Truex, Jr. is the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion. He’s got 19 career wins under his belt, and an overall 19 years experience.
But when it comes to what kind of racing we’ll see on Sunday with the new rules package at Atlanta Motor Speedway, he had no idea.
“No, nobody has any idea about anything,” Truex, Jr. said. “I think pretty much all teams had more questions going into practice today than any time I can remember in the sport maybe back to when we first ran the Car of Tomorrow. It was just there were so many questions and so many different ways you can do this. There’s so many different options to set the car up aero-wise and different things. A lot of questions and only an hour and 20 minutes of practice, so still a lot to learn.”
Truex, Jr. said he expects it will be that way for a few weeks to come.
“I think it will because we’re going to different race tracks again. We go to Phoenix, it’s going to be totally different again with more horsepower, so yeah, we’re going to learn a lot through the first five races with the different race tracks and then try to figure it out and go from there.”
Truex said while it will take time to understand what’s going on with the new package, drivers still want to get off to a good start.
“You hope that your preparation is better than everybody else’s and you can kind of have some good results early and have something to build off of. I think most teams aren’t just guessing, they’re just let’s see how close our calculations really are in our sim and all those things. You’ve got to kind of get all that stuff correlated so it takes a little bit of time.”
Despite that challenge, Truex, Jr. said he enjoys the challenge of racing at Atlanta.
“It’s so so slick. The tires wear out so much in the long runs,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun on the long runs that race. Being able to move around on the race track, it’s just a fun place. I enjoy that and I think handling is still going to be the key to winning here – being good on the long run. You just hope that you don’t get caught by one of those late cautions and not have the speed to go for five or 10 laps. We’ve kind of been in that position before a few times and it’s bit us.
“It’s just a fun track to race at and hopefully it’ll be a hell of a race.”
Bowyer Blasts To Top Of Final Practice Speed Charts
Clint Bowyer continues to show strength at Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend. After contending for the pole before slotting in third on the starting grid, Bowyer backed that up by timing in quickest in Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series final practice early Saturday.
Despite misting rain over the 1.5 speedway, Bowyer turned a lap in 30.954 seconds at 179.104 mph in his No. 14 Ford Mustang.
“I feel like we learned quite a bit. You have to check the boxes off,” said Bowyer. “I was talking about the balance of this thing and the ability to work on balance with the drag versus downforce. You know it is going to be different at this race track than it will be at Vegas or any other race track. You are going to have that adjustability built into the car and the understanding of where you are at and where you need to be. There will be teams tomorrow that drastically miss this and ones that hit it. The ones that hit it are going to have a lot of fun. The ones that don’t are going to be miserable. There isn’t a whole lot you can do in the race to change that.”
Kyle Busch was second quick, but an encounter with the wall during practice sent him to a back up No. 18 Toyota, meaning he will have to drop to the back of the field for the start of the race.
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Austin Dillon, Michael McDowell and Corey LaJoie rounded out the top five in practice. Defending race winner Kevin Harvick was 21st fast, with Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin 26th quick, Dawsonville, Georgia’s Chase Elliott 29th fast and Unadilla, Georgia’s David Ragan 20th quick on the speed charts.
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series
Atlanta Motor Speedway – Hampton, GA
Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 – February 24, 2019
Sunday’s Starting Lineup
1. (10) Aric Almirola, Ford, 181.473 mph.
2. (17) Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., Ford, 180.428 mph.
3. (14) Clint Bowyer, Ford, 180.410 mph.
4. (11) Denny Hamlin, Toyota, 180.328 mph.
5. (41) Daniel Suarez, Ford, 180.216 mph.
6. (18) Kyle Busch, Toyota, 179.942 mph.
7. (42) Kyle Larson, Chevrolet, 179.842 mph.
8. (1) Kurt Busch, Chevrolet, 179.796 mph.
9. (19) Martin Truex, Jr., Toyota, 179.697 mph.
10. (3) Austin Dillon, Chevrolet, 179.598 mph.
11. (48) Jimmie Johnson, Chevrolet, 179.417 mph.
12. (34) Michael McDowell, Ford, 179.330 mph.
13. (6) Ryan Newman, Ford, 179.383 mph.
14. (21) Paul Menard, Ford, 179.371 mph.
15. (20) Erik Jones, Toyota, 179.249 mph.
16. (88) Alex Bowman, Chevrolet, 179.116 mph.
17. (24) William Byron, Chevrolet, 178.960 mph.
18. (4) Kevin Harvick, Ford, 178.891 mph.
19. (2) Brad Keselowski, Ford, 178.850 mph.
20. (95) Matt DiBenedetto, Toyota, 178.672 mph.
21. (13) Ty Dillon, Chevrolet, 178.562 mph.
22. (9) Chase Elliott, Chevrolet, 178.487 mph.
23. (38) David Ragan, Ford, 178.201 mph.
24. (32) Corey LaJoie, Ford, 177.989 mph.
25. (47) Ryan Preece #, Chevrolet, 178.281 mph.
26. (12) Ryan Blaney, Ford, 178.155 mph.
27. (22) Joey Logano, Ford, 178.006 mph.
28. (8) Daniel Hemric #, Chevrolet, 177.943 mph.
29. (43) Darrell Wallace, Jr., Chevrolet, 177.715 mph.
30. (37) Chris Buescher, Chevrolet, 176.995 mph.
31. (36) Matt Tifft #, Ford, 176.696 mph.
32. (15) Ross Chastain(i), Chevrolet, 175.989 mph.
33. (00) Landon Cassill, Chevrolet, 175.933 mph.
34. (96) Parker Kligerman(i), Toyota, 175.810 mph.
35. (77) Garrett Smithley(i), Chevrolet, 170.072 mph.
36. (51) Cody Ware #, Ford, 168.255 mph.
37. (52) B.J. McLeod(i), Chevrolet, 0.000 mph.
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