NASCAR
Daniel Suárez wins Atlanta NASCAR Cup race in fantastic three-wide finish
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
The collective gasp in the Atlanta Motor Speedway press box was clearly audible when Austin Cindric took the field four-wide on Sunday.
With Michael McDowell, Martin Truex Jr. and Chase Briscoe running side-by-side at the front of the field, Cindric steered his No. 2 Team Penske Ford to the bottom of the track as the cars approached Turn 1.
Squeezing through a hole between McDowell’s Ford and the white “out-of-bounds” lines between the apron and the racing surface at the 1.54-mile track, Cindric took the lead with 50 laps left.
Following Cindric into the corner, Kyle Busch kept the field four-wide into Turn 2, and when Busch cleared McDowell, Todd Gilliand took his place at the exit from the turn.
“It must have looked as cool as it felt,” Cindric said after the race. “You don’t get runs like that too often and be able to take ‘em and do something with ‘em.
“But I was pretty confident I was going to get clear before the corner and stay above the double white line. Yeah, it was cool.”
Cindric’s pass for the lead wasn’t an isolated incident. The Ambetter Health 400 featured unabated action throughout the race.
Appropriately, it ended with the closest finish among three cars in motorsports history, with Daniel Suarez taking the checkered flag 0.003 seconds ahead of runner-up Ryan Blaney and 0.007 seconds clear of third-place Busch.
What enhanced the excitement of this particular race was the relative instability of the cars in traffic.
“We were not comfortable,” Suarez said in his post-race press conference. “I don’t think there were many cars going wide-open besides the front row cars… It was not easy, not easy at all.
“This race track is fairly new, and it already has some bumps, so it wasn’t easy. But it was great racing—it was great racing.”
Gilliand, who led a race-high 58 laps before a flat tire ruined his chances, put it more succinctly in a radio transmission reported by Jeff Gluck of The Athletic.
“It’s like going to a haunted house, you know?” Gilliland said. “It’s fun, but I’m scared for my life at the same time.”
A repaving project after the summer race of 2021 made the character of Sunday’s race possible. Before the resurfacing, Atlanta had the oldest, most degraded asphalt on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit.
The drivers loved the old pavement and initially decried the transformation of the speedway into a narrower track with higher banking in the corners, a track which now can accommodate the superspeedway competition package previously reserved for Daytona and Talladega.
It was the reconfiguration, however, that helped to create one of the most compelling events in recent memory.
For the first time in Cup Series history, the season began with back-to-back superspeedway races. In the DAYTONA 500, William Byron was inches ahead of Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman when caution slowed the race—after Byron had taken the white flag.
Six days later, the Atlanta race ended in a photo finish, engendering great expectations for NASCAR’s return to the track on Sept. 8 for the first race of the Cup Playoffs.
It also created a temptation. If the Atlanta event earned overwhelming praise for the quality of its racing action, why not try the combination at other intermediate tracks?
That’s not a good idea, says Byron, even though the driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet has won twice at both Daytona and Atlanta.
“You take something that’s good in the sport, and you oversaturate it,” Byron said. “I feel like we’ve been down that path. We can’t oversaturate something that’s a niche, a unique thing that looks really great.
“I just think it’s in our best interest to have unique challenges each week, and that one is—Atlanta’s a great challenge. I love going there, but I don’t want that every week.”
Just as trips to a haunted house can lose their impact through repetition, the transformation of additional intermediate tracks into superspeedways would alter the balance of the sport—and haunt the balance sheets of team owners tasked with replacing wrecked race cars.
By Holly Cain
NASCAR Wire Service
LONG POND, PA (June 13. 2026) It’s been a recurring theme in the NASCAR Cup Series in recent weeks. Denny Hamlin is out front.
The veteran driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota claimed his fourth Busch Light Pole position of the season Saturday afternoon at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway and will lead the field to green in Sunday’s Great American Getaway 400 presented by VISITPA (1 p.m. ET on Prime Video, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Of note, with poor weather expected later Sunday afternoon, the green flag start time (1 p.m.) has been moved up two hours earlier than its originally scheduled time.
This marks the 51st pole position of Hamlin’s career and comes as the popular veteran is attempting to win three consecutive races for the first time in his celebrated career after victories the last two weeks in Nashville and Michigan.
He was the last driver to take to the track in Saturday’s qualifying session and just nudged Hendrick Motorsports’ driver Kyle Larson from the top position in the final minutes – Hamlin’s lap of 173.250 mph around the 2.5-mile triangular-shaped Pocono track was .057-second quicker than Larson’s best.
“Certainly had the grip, this whole team just did a great job with adjustments, making it a little better from practice, I didn’t execute a very good lap there in Turn 2, but overall I thought I hit [turns] three and one pretty decent – just good enough,” Hamlin said.
He acknowledged he and the team are certainly on a hot streak at the moment with wins in the non-points paying All-Star Race four weeks ago plus the two victories in the last two weeks. The effort has helped Hamlin cut 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick’s 100-plus point advantage over him atop the standings to only 51 points heading into Pocono, a place Hamlin has won a record seven times.
“It’s certainly going well and confidence is up with these guys [on the team] that every time I enter a corner at about 200, I know they’ve built me a car that’s going to stick,” Hamlin said, acknowledging his three-in-a-row opportunity.
“This is the best shot for sure, we’ve got a little work to do on the car overnight to get it to be a race winner, but I feel like we’re in that box where we need to be and we’ll fine tune it from here.”
Starting behind Hamlin and Larson are Daniel Suarez in the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet and Hamlin’s JGR teammates Ty Gibbs (No. 54 Toyota) and defending race winner Chase Briscoe (No. 19 Toyota).
Chris Buescher, who won his first career NASCAR Cup Series race at Pocono in 2016, qualified sixth – his No. 17 Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford the first Ford on the grid. Legacy Motor Club teammates Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek will start their Toyotas seventh and eighth. Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron (No. 24 Chevrolet) and Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney (No. 12 Ford) – who also earned his first career series win at Pocono in 2017 – round out the top-10 on the grid.
Of note, 23XI Racing’s Reddick will roll of 15th and his teammate, Bubba Wallace, will start from the rear of the field after a qualifying session accident. RFK owner-driver Brad Keselowski had engine trouble in the session and will start alongside Wallace on the last row.
By Holly Cain
NASCAR Wire Service
LONG POND, PA (June 13, 2026) – NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series’ MillerTech Battery 250 at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway Saturday featured a record 18 lead changes and a record 10 cautions – including a seven-minute red flag period – but in the end, it was a very familiar scenario in Victory Lane: championship leader Justin Allgaier and the No. 7 JR Motorsports team celebrating an inspired drive.
Allgaier led a race best 35 of the 100 laps – ultimately taking the lead for good on a restart with two laps remaining. Haas Factory teammates Sam Mayer – who was Allgaier’s greatest challenge on the day – and Sheldon Creed created a three-wide push for the lead on the final restart but ultimately slid backwards as Allgaier’s JR Motorsports teammate William Byron was able to push Allgaier’s No. 7 Chevrolet forward to create a gap on the field.
The advantage was all Allgaier needed to race off to a .607-second win over Joe Gibbs Racing’s Brent Crews – who passed Byron on the last corner of the last lap for second place.
The victory was the 2024 series champion Allgaier’s first at the historic Pocono 2.5-mile triangle-shaped track giving him wins now at 21 different venues. And it marked the fifth win of the year for Allgaier, tying his previous high season win total.
“First of all, I’ve got to say thank you to William Byron because without his shove at the end of the race, it was probably game over,” Allgaier said before thanking the fans for filling the grandstands.
“This season has been special with [crew chief] Andrew Overstreet and this whole number seven team and this pit crew right here,” he said, adding with a grin, “We’re going to go celebrate this one for sure.”
Slowed by all the caution flags – four in the opening 25-lap stage alone – the early part of the race never allowed for one driver to establish a rhythm and truly set a pace among all the starting and stopping.
Polesitter Taylor Gray led 24 laps and won the opening stage and Crews claimed the stage two win. But the final half of the race was really a duel between Allgaier and Mayer, who led 14 laps and exchanged the lead with Allgaier frequently in the race’s closing laps – sometimes on the same lap. They started side-by-side out front on the three final restarts and Mayer looked like his No. 41 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet would at least keep Allgaier honest. In the end, Mayer and Creed finished fourth and fifth.
“It was either the double zero [Creed] was trying to make a block, or just a push gone wrong a little bit,” Mayer said, of the unsuccessful three-wide move on that last restart. “Just really unfortunate circumstance. We actually had a really good launch.
“At the end of these races, you’re not going to not take a run so I don’t blame my teammate for pulling out of line like that, but obviously it put me in a bad spot,” Mayer continued. “The middle [lane] was okay if I had people with me. … obviously today we executed really, really well, so lots to be proud about, but obviously I’m very devastated right now because I just want a shot at it and don’t feel like I haven’t gotten a really true shot at it when the white flag flew.
“We were close today executed really good and really proud of everybody. One day it’s going to be my turn, and I can’t wait.”
Incredibly, Allgaier’s effort – the 33rd victory of his career – now puts him an unbelievable 250 points up on second place, Richard Childress Racing driver Jesse Love in the series championship standings with seven regular season races remaining. Love only completed a single lap after being collected in the first of 10 yellow-flag incidents on the day.
“Just frustrated obviously, thought our Camaro was going to be good today,” Love said, adding, “Only got one lap to feel it out but I was happy with that one corner, wish we had gotten a few more.”
Anthony Alfredo, Rajah Caruth, Brandon Jones, the defending Pocono race winner Connor Zilisch and Carson Kvapil rounded out the top-10.
Jeremy Clements led a lap and finished 16th in a historical day for his career and the series. The 41-year-old South Carolinian tied Kenny Wallace for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series most all-time starts – 547 races. Wallace set the record in 2011 and last raced in 2015. Clements will claim the mark for himself when he takes next week’s green flag at San Diego.
The series heads to Southern California for next Saturday’s inaugural United Rentals Driven to Serve 250 (5:30 p.m. ET on The CW, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) on the Coronado Naval Base.
BROOKLYN, MI (June 6, 2026) – Kris Wright and the No. 81 McAnally Hilgemann Racing team a hoping for better days after a frustrating DQS Solutions & Staffing 250 powered by Precision Vehicle Logistics Saturday at Michigan International Speedway.
Wright started 27th in the No. 81 iHeart Radio Silverado RST on the 2-mile oval. The race was only 7-laps old when Wright was involved in an accident, causing him to lose a lap while his team made repairs.
Wright was quickly back on pit road on Lap 18 after a left rear tire issue required additional work by his crew. Wright returned to the race three laps down at that point.
“Brutal day for our iHeartRadio team,” said Wright. “The No. 81 crew worked hard all weekend to get speed in the truck, and we never really had the opportunity to show what we were capable of.”
Fuel-only pit stops during the races final stage enabled Wright and his team to finish 31st. Corey Heim was the race winner.
Fan favorite Cleetus McFarland, in only his second series start, rallied from a late race spin that brought out one of seven yellow flags – and finished 25th on the lead lap.
The trucks are off next week and will return to action June 19 in the inaugural NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series Race in San Diego on the Naval Base Coronado (7 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“I’m looking forward to getting to San Diego in a couple of weeks,” said Wright. “Road courses have always suited my driving style, and it’ll be special to spend the weekend in Coronado celebrating the military members who will be in attendance.”
Denny Hamlin grabs the NASCAR Cup pole at Pocono Raceway
Justin Allgaier captures first Pocono victory after wild late-race restart
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Alex Palou wins fourth straight pole position at World Wide Technology Raceway
Rough day for Wright at Michigan
New York Dog wins the Wienie 500 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
NASCAR community mourns the loss of champion driver Kyle Busch
Felix Rosenqvist wins the 110th Indianapolis 500
Sams Sprints to Victory as Tri-City Beats the Rain
