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.
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.’’
As for Reddick he 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.”
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