Information By: MIKE ARNING / STEWART-HAAS RACING – KANNAPOLIS, NC
NOAH GRAGSON
Atlanta Advance
No. 10 Overstock.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Event Overview
● Event: Atlanta 400 (Round 27 of 36)
● Time/Date: 3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Sept. 8
● Location: Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia
● Layout: 1.54-mile oval
● Laps/Miles: 260 laps/400 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 60 laps / Stage 2: 100 laps / Final Stage: 100 laps
● TV/Radio: USA / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Notes of Interest
● Atlanta Motor Speedway has been around since 1960, but the Atlanta track Gragson and his NASCAR Cup Series brethren will compete on this Sunday is less than three years old. The 1.54-mile oval was reconfigured after the final race of the 2021 season. The banking was increased from 24 degrees to 28 degrees and the track was narrowed from 55-feet wide to 40-feet wide, and it was all covered in fresh asphalt. The goal of the reconstruction was to recreate the kind of pack-style racing seen at the behemoth, 2.5-mile Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway and the even bigger 2.66-mile Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. Drivers competed on the new layout for the first time in March 2022 and the Atlanta 400 will be the sixth Cup Series race on the revamped track.
● The Atlanta 400 will mark Gragson’s sixth NASCAR Cup Series start at Atlanta, and all five of his prior starts have come on the updated configuration. The driver of the No. 10 Overstock.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Stewart-Haas Racing earned his best Atlanta finish in his third Atlanta start – 12th in March 2023. Gragson’s most recent Atlanta start came earlier this year in the Feb. 25 Ambetter Health 400. It was incredibly short-lived, however, as Gragson was collected in a 16-car accident on just the third tour of the 260-lap race. While his crew repaired the No. 10 Ford enough for it to return to the racetrack, Gragson was only able to make 63 more laps before his battered racecar became undriveable, forcing him to the garage.
● Gragson has six NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at Atlanta, the last two of which came in 2022, the first year of the reconfiguration. He finished among the top-10 in all but one of his Xfinity Series starts at the track, and his best finish was a second-place drive in June 2020.
● Gragson also has two Atlanta starts in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. He finished 14th in his first Truck Series start at the track in 2017 and then earned a second-place finish when he returned to Atlanta in 2018, leading the first 43 laps.
● Overstock.com adorns Gragson’s No. 10 Ford Mustang Dark Horse at Atlanta. The partnership amplifies the recent relaunch of Overstock.com, home of crazy good deals that offer quality and style for less. Overstock.com is for the savvy shopper who loves the thrill of the hunt and it includes product categories customers know and love, like patio furniture, home furniture and area rugs, while reintroducing jewelry, watches and health-and-beauty products.
Noah Gragson, Driver of the No. 10 Overstock.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse
How much does racing at Atlanta emulate what you experienced two weeks ago at Daytona?
“It’s hard to tell what we’re going to have at Atlanta. Handling definitely comes into play more so than at Daytona. Still, at Daytona, you have handling issues if you get held on the bottom. It just seems like everything happens a little bit faster at Atlanta. The straightaways are shorter, so you don’t have the time to mount your runs. It’s different than the superspeedways. There’s a lot more pushing on the straightaways at Daytona and Talladega. At Atlanta, you can’t really get locked up for the whole straightaway and get away. Everybody’s super tight together. It’s a mix between an intermediate track and Daytona and Talladega. It’s a little bit of a different form of racing.”
Daytona and Talladega races are known to be crapshoots, where there are so many things out of your control. Is that also the case at Atlanta, or are you still able to make a little bit of your own luck at Atlanta?
“It’s probably the same as far as making your own luck and getting to the front. You can work your way up to the front, you just really don’t want to get stuck in the back. With green-flag pit stops, the commitment line starts early and they start taking pit-road speed into turn three and you run the apron all the way through (turns) three and four during green-flag pit stops. That makes it a little bit different and it bites some guys, but for me, I take the same mindset going into Atlanta as I do Daytona and Talladega.”
Your first race at Atlanta was back in February. Seven months have passed and the weather is now a lot hotter and a lot more humid. How much does Atlanta change from late February to early September, and how do you prepare for that change?
“It’ll probably be slicker, but you don’t really know until you get into the race. You qualify one lap on Saturday and then you race on Sunday. You don’t know how your car’s going to draft or anything because we don’t have any practice. So you’ve got to figure all that out on the fly. I feel like you’re just trying to learn all day and figure out what your car’s tendencies are and where it’s good. But for the most part, there’s not much time to really know. There are a lot of unknowns and uncertainty until you get five laps into the race and you know, ‘Hey, my car’s a little loose, my car’s a little tight, this is what I need.’”
What do you need in your racecar to be fast at Atlanta?
“You’ve got to be fast and you can’t be too draggy. It’s bitten me in the past where we started the race tight and I couldn’t make any passes, and then we kept on freeing the car up, loosening it up, and probably got past the neutral point in the balance and got too loose and I ended up wrecking. But the freer we got it, the faster I went. So it’s a fine line of what’s enough, and that’s what I’m trying to figure out, what’s too much, what’s enough, but you definitely have to be handling good to be able to tug on the wheel and keep the thing wide open.”
Are you wide open every lap at Atlanta?
“You’re wide open in qualifying. In the race, you’re working the throttle more. At Daytona and Talladega, you’re more pacing the throttle to save fuel, where at Atlanta, you’re lifting out of the gas because you’ll get tight or loose behind guys and you have to really play with the timing on your throttle for when you get runs up to guys. You’re playing with the throttle because of handling.”
Is competing at Atlanta mentally taxing?
“Atlanta is mentally taxing. You’re still having the same thought processes that you do with superspeedway racing, but it’s just faster. You’re mentally drained after Atlanta.”
When you get to Atlanta, it’s just 10 more races until the season is over. What do you want to accomplish in these last 10 races at Stewart-Haas?
“We want to have strong runs, complete all the laps, have strong finishes inside the top-10, top-five, and just be able to learn for the future, keep building the notebook for the races next year, learn as a driver, and just try and take it all in. Obviously, it’s going to get more emotional each and every weekend, getting closer to that last weekend in Phoenix. With that being said, we’ve got a great group and we’re really focused in and we want to have strong runs. The goal is to get to victory lane, but if we can’t do that, I think having top-10 finishes, top-fives, that would be a win to us right now.”
Even though you’re changing teams next year, you’ll remain with Ford in 2025. How helpful is it to be able to carry what you’re learning this year into next year with the same manufacturer?
“I definitely think being with the same manufacturer is good. You know the people, you know how the simulator operates, and you’re definitely taking a lot of notes to carry on into 2025.”