1. Is qualifying a waste of time at superspeedways?
After going through most of 2020 and 2021 without practice and qualifying, the two sessions made their way back at the start of the Next Gen era. Well, at least qualifying did.
The weekend routine at superspeedways grew considerably lighter with the absence of practice. On one hand, it stays consistent with NASCAR’s efforts to save teams money.
No practice means less sessions to have to put cars on track, spend money on tires, and worry about the potential, no matter how small for carnage.
On the other hand, superspeedway qualifying is equally, if not more, pointless.
Drivers have joked about their lack of skill and effort when qualifying for Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway. Atlanta Motor Speedway now requires a slight bit more nerve and precision, but the teams that qualify well at one superspeedway qualify well at them all.
Qualifying on a normal track at least points to which cars and drivers have the best ability to put down a quick lap, and it allows the drivers starting at the top to build gaps on drivers further back on the field. In these days, track position at some short tracks and road courses are more important than ever, and it all starts with a great qualifying effort.
At a superspeedway, starting first is no different than starting 31st. The leader is physically unable to pull away, and one stroke of luck, good or bad, can flip positions quicker than pancakes.
If we’re not going to practice – especially at Atlanta – then why should we qualify?
Having the chance to feel out the car in the draft seems like it would be way more important for drivers to try out before the race. Especially for rookies, or drivers attempting to cross over from a different racing series. A single lap all alone has no sort of relation to what the drivers will face in the race.
When you consider that Atlanta races just a little different from weekend to weekend, it feels like giving teams and drivers a chance to feel the draft on the track before the race would be even more important.
2. When will Atlanta have its crossover moment?
The lack of superspeedway practice specifically comes up at Atlanta because the surface has drastically changed every year.
After the repave, projected speeds were too high so NASCAR implemented the superspeedway package to keep cars from going too fast. Its always seemed to be part of the plan, however, that the track would age enough one day that handling would become too important and the cars would return to a normal setup.
In recent years, drivers have actually had their hands full in qualifying, with a few even spinning out. Additionally, while Atlanta has never raced like a traditional superspeedway, cars are having more and more difficult times trying to run side-by-side in a pack.
Specifically, the inside line has a harder time generating a run when crunch time comes and drivers start pushing for the win.
Drivers keep commenting on how much grayer the track looks each time NASCAR returns to Atlanta. At what point will the track be worn enough that teams can race it like a normal mile-and-a-half track again?
Hopefully teams can test unrestricted cars sometime this season to get a measure on what stage the surface wear is at.
3.Can Richard Childress Racing transfer superspeedway success to the rest of the season?
Mesmerizing, frustrating, confounding.
Those words come to mind when taking about Richard Childress Racing and Austin Hill on superspeedways. Hill is definitely in the heads of the rest of the NASCAR Xfinity Series field.
As much as other drivers want to de-throne the No. 21, they seem to wind up fighting each other at the finish, allowing Hill to just drive away.
Hill’s ability is mesmerizing, the field’s inability is frustrating, and the fight for second is at times confounding.
RCR has not lost a stage or race this year, dominating at Daytona with both Hill and Jesse Love and again this weekend.
As good as they have been at superspeedways, RCR sort of fades into a slightly above-average team everywhere else. Hill has 10 wins in the last three seasons. Only three of them have been on non-superspeedway tracks.
The speed has been spotty outside of Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta for the RCR duo, but it hasn’t been absent.
Hill has grown into a contender at more and more venues, but he hasn’t quite shown the dominant ability across the entirety of the schedule.
The driver of the No. 2, Love, also showed a ton of improvement in his rookie campaign, but with two superspeedways to start the season, it’s hard to get a read on where he is to start the season.
The start of 2025 is consistent with what we’ve become used to seeing out of the RCR group, but with both cars locked into the playoffs, the team should have plenty of opportunity to work on their non-superspeedway setups to try and become weekly contenders.
4. How long will it take to identify contenders?
I suppose it’s hard to identify the who’s who of the season just a handful of races in no matter how the season lays out. The way the 2025 season starts, however, feels like we won’t know the contenders until at least April.
Beginning with Atlanta and Daytona leaves a lot of chance on the table to shake up the points standings. Surely Kyle Larson won’t remain outside the top 20 in points for the duration of the year.
Similarly, I expect improvement from John Hunter Nemechek this year, but a top-10 points run might be a little too ambitious. It’s all on the table, however, through the first two races.
A road course up next on the menu could also involve a more non-traditional cast of characters scoring points and competing for the win.
The West Coast swing is no more, but frontloading the schedule with more “chaos tracks” makes it harder to identify which drivers have the most momentum to start the season. It also leaves some guys in some pretty big holes just a few weeks in.
Don’t read too much into the results you see these first three weeks. At the same time, pay attention to any big names that might be missing out on points to start the season, because that could be big when Daytona rolls around again this summer.
Caleb began sports writing in 2023 with The Liberty Champion, where he officially covered his first NASCAR race at Richmond in the spring. While there, Caleb met some of the guys from Frontstretch, and he joined the video editing team after graduating from Liberty University with degrees in Strategic Communications and Sports Journalism. Caleb currently work full-time as a Multi-Media Journalist with LEX 18 News in Lexington, Kentucky and contributes to Frontstretch with writing and video editing. He's also behind-the-scenes or on camera for the Happy Hour Podcast, live every Tuesday night at 7:30!