Race Information
- Round: NASCAR Cup Series race No. 5 of 36
- Track Location: Atlanta Motor Speedway, Hampton, GA
- Race Name: Ambetter Health 400
- Broadcast: Sunday, March 19th at 3:00 PM ET live on FOX (TV), PRN (Radio), and SiriusXM NASCAR Channel 90
- Team Entrants:
No. 42 | Noah Gragson & Luke Lambert – Sunseeker Resorts Chevrolet
No. 43 | Erik Jones & Dave Elenz – Allegiant Chevrolet
Noah Gragson, No. 42 Sunseeker Resorts Chevrolet Camaro ZL1
Atlanta Motor Speedway Stats
- NCS Starts: 2; Best Start: 29th, Best Finish: 34th (Fall, 2022)
- NXS Starts: 6; Poles: 2; Best Finish: 2nd (2020), Top 5s: 3, Top 10s: 5, Laps led: 58
- NCTS Starts: 2; Best Start: 3rd; Best Finish: 2nd (2018), Laps led: 43
2023 NCS Season Stats
- Starts: 4; Best Start: 20th; Best Finish: 22nd (Auto Club), Current points position: 32nd
- About Sunseeker Resorts: Opening in 2023, Florida’s newest luxury resort located in Charlotte Harbor is the first resort property of Sunseeker Resorts, a wholly owned subsidiary of Allegiant Travel Company. Sunseeker Resort Charlotte Harbor occupies over 22 waterfront acres with 785 guest rooms, including 189 Signature Sunsuites™. Set upon the Peace River and Florida Gulf Coast, this premier resort offers 20 original food and beverage concepts; including seven stand-alone restaurants, eleven bars and lounges, two poolside offerings and a 25,000-square-foot multi-dining experience. Additional hotel amenities include a waterfront promenade, two unique rooftop and waterfront pool experiences, 60,000-square-feet of combined convention space, full-service spa and salon, a 7,100-square-foot state-of-the-art fitness center with four group exercise studios with specialty instructor lead classes, three retail and market shops, and an 18-hole championship level golf club exclusive to hotel guests only. The resort is conveniently located within a short drive of Punta Gorda, Fort Myers, Sarasota, St. Petersburg-Clearwater, and Tampa airports. For more information, visit www.sunseekerresorts.com. Follow us on Instagram: @sunseekerresorts and like us on Facebook: @sunseekerresorts.
- Line ‘em up: This weekend NASCAR’s superspeedway format is effect for this weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway, so there will be no practice for the teams before the NASCAR Cup Series teams qualify on Saturday, March 18.
- Lambert Knows Best: Gragson’s crew chief Luke Lambert has 11 starts in the NASCAR Cup Series at Atlanta recording two second place starting positions and two top-10 finishes with his respective drivers.
- Starting at the Front: Gragson has six starts at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. He won two pole positions, three top-five and five top-10 finishes. Gragson has completed 100% of the 988 laps attempted while leading 58 of them. He also has raced the 1.5-mile tri-oval twice in a NASCAR Craftsman Truck scoring a runner-up and a 10th place finish, and 43 laps led.
- From the Driver’s Seat: “I’ve really enjoyed racing at Atlanta over the years. It’s going to be tough without practice on Saturday as I think we can use all the laps we can get being rookies, but we have some great notes to go on from the No. 43 team are focused forward.”
Erik Jones, No. 43 Allegiant Chevrolet Camaro ZL1
Atlanta Motor Speedway Stats
- NCS Starts: 8; Best Start: 10th; Best Finish: 4th (Fall, 2022); Top 5s: 1; Top 10s: 2; Laps Led: 10
- NXS Starts: 2; Best Start: 2nd; Best Finish: 3rd (Spring, 2016); Top 5s: 1; Top 10s: 1
- NCTS Starts: 1; Best Start: 2nd; Best Finish 7th (2015) Top 5s: 1; Top 10s: 1; Laps Led: 37
2023 NCS Season Stats
- Starts: 4; Best Start: 10th; Best Finish: 19th (twice); Laps led: 14; Current Points Position: 28th
- About Allegiant: Las Vegas-based Allegiant (NASDAQ: ALGT) is an integrated travel company with an airline at its heart, focused on connecting customers with the people, places and experiences that matter most. Since 1999, Allegiant Air has linked travelers in small-to-medium cities to world-class vacation destinations with all-nonstop flights and industry-low average fares. Today, Allegiant’s fleet serves communities across the nation, with base airfares less than half the cost of the average domestic roundtrip ticket. For more information, visit us at Allegiant.com.
- Atlanta Speed: Jones and the No. 43 team showed up with some fast Chevrolets in both Atlanta races last season. In the spring race, Jones ran up inside the top-10 consistently, completing stage one in fifth position. Ultimately, damage sustained from a multi-car incident hampered the end result, leading to a 14th place finish. In the fall race, Jones stepped up the run, leading 10 laps and staying up front for the majority of the event after starting deep in the field. Erik found himself in position to contend for the race win, coming away with an impressive fourth place finish – earning his second top-five of the year.
- Best Qualifying Effort: Erik had quite the run in qualifying last time out at Phoenix Raceway. The No. 43 Allegiant Chevrolet turned heads in round one, with Jones posting the second-fastest lap in Group A. After round two had come to a close, Jones would see himself line up in the 10th starting spot – his best qualifying result of the season. In addition, Jones was able to lead his first laps of the season during that race, leading 14 circuits in total.
- READWithErik: This week, Jones visited his hometown of Byron, Mich., to read with students and donate a “Bookworm Vending Machine” to his former elementary school, Byron Elementary. The vending machine was gifted through the Erik Jones Foundation to encourage students to read. Students will earn credits that can be redeemed in the machine to purchase books, an idea inspired by Jones’s former teacher, Tammy Laurin. Th vending machine is an extension of Jones’s youth reading program initiative called #READwithErik that has become a signature activity of his foundation. Jones, an avid reader, began the #READwithErik program by reading to children on his Facebook page when COVID19 shut down the country in March of 2020. Since launching the program, Jones has read nearly 50 children’s books to young readers. His readings to kids have been viewed nearly a quarter of a million times. In addition to reading online, Jones has also read books to children at several NASCAR races around the country. For more information go to www.ErikJonesFoundation.org.
- From the Driver’s Seat: Last year, your team was really strong in both Atlanta races. What is it about the superspeedway style of racing on the reconfiguration that fits in your wheel house?
“I liked racing in Atlanta last year. It was a lot different obviously with the new layout and new format style of racing. It’s kind of like having an extra superspeedway track for us, but you have a little more handling involved, especially more than what we have at say, Talladega. I feel like our speedway program has been strong; I feel like at the Daytona 500, we had a good car. So hopefully, we can be just as strong there and be able to just lead some laps, be up front, and have a shot to win. Last year, we were pretty close in a couple of them in Atlanta. You know, I really felt like in the second race there we had a great shot to win, and hopefully we can go back down there and close this one out with our Allegiant Chevy.”
ABOUT LEGACY MOTOR CLUB:
LEGACY MOTOR CLUB is a team that competes full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series, owned by Maury Gallagher and Jimmie Johnson. LEGACY M.C. operates two full-time entries, the No. 42 Chevrolet of Noah Gragson and the No. 43 Chevrolet of Erik Jones. The team also fields a third part-time entry, the No. 84 Chevrolet, for Johnson’s limited racing schedule.
For the last 75 years, the iconic Petty family name has been synonymous in NASCAR, spanning four generations. Over the course of his driving career, Team Ambassador Richard Petty forever enshrined himself as “The King”, earning 200 wins and seven NASCAR Cup Series championships alongside NASCAR Hall of Fame crew chief Dale Inman. GMS Racing entered the NASCAR Cup Series in 2021, later acquiring Richard Petty Motorsports to form Petty GMS.
The team was rebranded to LEGACY MOTOR CLUB in 2023 with the addition of Johnson, another seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, to the ownership structure. As a nod to car clubs of past eras, LEGACY M.C. is an inclusive club for the automobile racing enthusiast, fostering a team environment that will breed success for years to come. LEGACY M.C.’s vision is to honor the rich history of its past and acknowledge the future of the sport with some of today’s most iconic drivers.
LEGACY M.C. operates alongside GMS Racing, which fields three full-time entries in the NASCAR Truck Series. Since the formation of GMS Racing in 2012, Gallagher, along with one of the NASCAR garage’s most accomplished figures, Team President, Mike Beam, built a victorious organization, capturing the 2016 and 2020 NASCAR Truck Series championships, the 2015 ARCA Racing Series championship, as well as the 2019 & 2020 ARCA East championships, accumulating over 65 wins across six national racing circuits.
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