HAMPTON, Ga. – The NASCAR Xfinity Series moves from a road course to the heart of the schedule with Saturday afternoon’s Alsco Uniforms 250 (5 p.m. ET on USA Network, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at the high-speed Atlanta Motor Speedway 1.5-miler.
And thanks to Ty Gibbs dramatic overtime pass for victory last week at Wisconsin’s Road America, he becomes the youngest driver (19 years, eight months, four weeks) to score eight career Xfinity Series wins and his work certainly makes the Regular Season Championship standings closer than ever.
Only nine points now separate the four-race 2022 winner Gibbs from current driver standings leader and veteran A.J. Allmendinger, a two-race winner.
The two drivers played prominent roles the last time the series raced in Atlanta this Spring. Gibbs led only one lap on the day – the last lap – in a multiple-overtime finish to claim his second win of the year. Allmendinger led a race best 41 laps and finished third.
Three of the last four Atlanta race winners are fulltime Xfinity Series drivers – Allmendinger (2020), Allgaier (2021) and Gibbs (2022) – the lone exception in that time is defending race winner Kyle Busch, who is not entered this weekend.
Ten regular season races is still a lot of time to shape and re-shape the championship contention. The top three drivers – Kaulig Racing’s Allmendinger, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Gibbs, and JR Motorsports’ Justin Allgaier (-34) are still very much in the hunt for the regular season title.
Allgaier’s JRM teammate Noah Gragson was only 39 points out of the driver standings lead before receiving a 30-point, $35,000 penalty on Wednesday afternoon for “behavioral” infractions racing at Road America.
On the other end of the standings – Ryan Sieg holds the 12th and final transfer position with a solid 82-point edge on 13th place Anthony Alfredo.
The wild card in all this may be the good possibility for new winners.
Certainly, former NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champions Brett Moffitt and Sheldon Creed along with former Xfinity Series race winner Myatt Snider are easily favorites to earn a trophy in 2022 and vault into Playoff contention. Seven of the current 12 Playoff contenders have wins.
Both Moffitt and Creed, however, currently have as many DNFs as top-10 finishes – four for Moffitt and six for Creed. Snider has one top-five finish, four top 10s and three DNFs.
There are no practices scheduled for this return trip to Atlanta Motor Speedway. A two-round qualifying session is slated for 10:05 a.m. on Saturday morning and will be streamed on the NBC Sports App.
Source: Holly Cain / NASCAR Wire Service
