NASCAR: 2022 Atlanta qualifying – Full starting lineup, updates
By Asher Fair
The fifth race of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season, the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 is scheduled to take place Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The much-anticipated Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 race weekend at the newly repaved and reconfigured Atlanta Motor Speedway is here. The fifth race of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season is scheduled to take place on Sunday afternoon.
A qualifying session had initially been slated to solidify the starting lineup tomorrow afternoon, but that will no longer be the case.
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Due to inclement weather, Friday’s on-track activity has been canceled. This activity was slated to include a Cup Series practice session.
That practice session has now been pushed back until Saturday, so Saturday’s qualifying session has been removed from the schedule.
Atlanta Motor Speedway last hosted a qualifying session in February 2019. It was supposed to do so in March 2020, but just before of the race weekend was due to get underway is when the sport was shut down due to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The four-turn, 1.54-mile (2.478-kilometer) high-banked oval in Hampton, Georgia has since hosted three races: one in June 2020, one in March 2021, and one in July 2021. The 2021 season was the first season since the 2010 season during which two events were contested at the venue.
This weekend’s race, the first of two on the schedule for 2022, is set to be the first race at the track following the repave and reconfiguration.
It had also been set to mark the first appearance of the new qualifying format at the track.
Instead, the formula which was introduced in the summer of 2020, when practice and qualifying sessions were all but wiped off the calendar due to COVID-19-related restrictions, has set the starting lineup for Sunday’s race.
This formula is still used weekly in the Cup Series, but to set the qualifying order. With qualifying canceled, it is back to setting the starting lineup for this week.
That formula is as follows.
- Finish in previous race (driver): 25%
- Finish in previous race (car owner): 25%
- NOTE: For full-time drivers, these two 25% categories are effectively one large category of 50%
- Rank in owner standings: 35%
- Rank of driver’s fastest lap in previous race: 15%
Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe, who earned his first career victory in last Sunday’s race at Phoenix Raceway, is set to start from the pole position on Sunday afternoon behind the wheel of his #14 Ford.
Here is the full starting lineup for the 2022 Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Starting Lineup
1st – Chase Briscoe
2nd – Ryan Blaney
3rd – Joey Logano
4th – Kyle Busch
5th – Tyler Reddick
6th – Chase Elliott
7th – Ross Chastain
8th – Kevin Harvick
9th – Kurt Busch
10th – Aric Almirola
11th – Alex Bowman
12th – William Byron
13th – Daniel Suarez
14th – Chris Buescher
15th – Denny Hamlin
16th – Austin Cindric
17th – Austin Dillon
18th – Ty Dillon
19th – Bubba Wallace
20th – Cole Custer
21st – Kyle Larson
22nd – Justin Haley
23rd – Erik Jones
24th – Brad Keselowski
25th – Todd Gilliland
26th – Martin Truex Jr.
27th – Christopher Bell
28th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
29th – Michael McDowell
30th – A.J. Allmendinger
31st – Harrison Burton
32nd – Cody Ware
33rd – Corey LaJoie
34th – B.J. McLeod
35th – Garrett Smithley
36th – Landon Cassill
37th – Greg Biffle
The new qualifying format which was supposed to be used this weekend was used at Auto Club Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Phoenix Raceway earlier this season. Drivers are split into two groups for the single-car session, and each driver makes a single-lap qualifying run.
The top five drivers in each group advance to the second round, where they each make one more single-lap qualifying run to set the top 10 in the starting lineup. The remainder of the starting lineup is set based on the first round.
With next week’s race being a road course race at Circuit of the Americas, that format isn’t set to make another appearance until the race weekend at Richmond Raceway in two weeks.
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Tune in to Fox on Sunday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. ET for the live broadcast of the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 from Atlanta Motor Speedway. If you have yet to begin a free trial of FuboTV, now would be a great time to do so!