Coming right into a 12 months the place they badly wanted to indicate velocity and make fewer errors, Stewart-Haas Racing is off to the worst begin attainable at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Earlier than vehicles have even hit the observe for Saturday’s qualifying session at Atlanta, the vehicles of Ryan Preece and Noah Gragson each had roof rail deflectors confiscated by the sanctioning physique on Friday afternoon, per NASCAR.com. Any attainable penalties for the infraction could be introduced subsequent week, after Sunday’s Ambetter Well being 400. Stewart-Haas had an analogous concern final season with Chase Briscoe, whose group had a counterfeit half confiscated after the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, an L3 stage penalty.
Coming off a Daytona 500 the place the group had two vehicles place inside the highest 10, with Noah Gragson in ninth and Chase Briscoe in tenth, respectively, many followers had confidence within the group’s superspeedway talents with the circuit heading to a different drafting observe in Atlanta. Now, a few of that optimism is dashed, with potential penalties looming for the group no matter what occurs on the racetrack this weekend.
The excellent news is that no crew members on both group have been ejected, which has occurred prior to now for inspection-based points, with the automobile chief, and in uncommon cases, the crew chief, being ejected from the ability. Each Gragson and Preece can have all of their regular group members there as they attempt to win their means into the NASCAR Cup Collection playoffs on Sunday.
The No. 47 group of Ricky Stenhouse wasn’t so fortunate, nonetheless, as they failed pre-qualifying inspection twice, which resulted within the ejection of their engineer and lack of pit choice, which may show pricey if pit street is busy throughout inexperienced flag pit stops. Shedding pit choice means Stenhouse might be positioned in the course of the pit lane insanity come raceday irrespective of how properly he qualifies on Saturday morning.
Regardless of the penalty, the group will transfer on to qualifying Saturday morning (11:30 a.m. ET, FS1 PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and the Ambetter Well being 400 (3 p.m. ET, Fox, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), which is the second race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Collection season.
