ALMIROLA STARTS HIS SEASON STRONG WITH THIRD PLACE FINISH IN ATLANTA
Toyota Development Driver William Sawalich earns first career top-10 run
HAMPTON, Ga. (February 22, 2025) – Aric Almirola started his part-time schedule for Joe Gibbs Racing with a strong third-place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Saturday night. Almirola led on the white flag lap, but was unable to come away with his fourth win with Joe Gibbs Racing in the last two seasons.
His teammate, William Sawalich, drove through the last lap incident and delivered his first career top-10 finish, as the Toyota Development Driver brought his Toyota GR Supra home in ninth.
Toyota Racing Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS)
Atlanta Motor Speedway
Race 2 of 33 – 251.02 miles, 163 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Austin Hill*
2nd, Justin Allgaier*
3rd, ARIC ALMIROLA
4th, Sammy Smith*
5th, Nick Sanchez*
9th, WILLIAM SAWALICH
13th, BRANDON JONES
35th, DEAN THOMPSON
38th, TAYLOR GRAY
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 19 Young Life Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 3rd
Can you describe that last lap for us?
“It was fun. It was exciting. I thought we were going to steal it away from them. Their cars are just so strong – you can’t do anything but tip your cap to RCR (Richard Childress Racing) and their superspeedway program. They are the cars to beat when you come to these places. Austin (Hill) does a great job. Their cars are incredibly fast. I thought we were going to win the chess game. He got out front, and I felt like I had the help I needed from Parker (Retzlaff) and was going to be in a good spot. I got where I needed to – I got the position, but when I got to the inside, the 7 (Justin Allgaier) and our lane didn’t have the energy to help me race side-by-side and kind of drag race. He got back out front and I just tried really hard to slow down to the 7 but he didn’t have any energy behind him, and I just over-slowed my race car and let the 7 beat me to the line, which is probably dumb, but it was the right thing that I needed to do to try and generate one last run to try and beat the 21 (Austin Hill). I guess at that point, I should have just taken second.”
WILLIAM SAWALICH, No. 18 Soundgear Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 9th
Solid top-10. What do you feel like you learned today and can take to the next superspeedway?
“I learned a lot about how to stay in the draft and how to manage your position and how to manage runs. We had a good Soundgear GR Supra today. We had some speed – not so much in the first and second stage, but we brought it together for the third stage and we had good pit stops and did the little things right today.”
TAYLOR GRAY, No. 54 Operation 300 Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 38th
What are you feeling like after ending up in a wreck after a strong run early?
“I felt like our Operation 300 GR Supra was as fast as Xfinity Mobile; just fought being really free at the beginning of the race, and got shuffled out and lost my track position. Unfortunately, that happens when you bring a bunch of cars here and essentially do a speedway and try to make ground back up when we are all running single file. I was trying to run the middle and get some ground made back up. I felt like the laps were winding down and I needed to start going somewhere. The 51 (Jeremy Clements) just started to shade down – not sure if he was just following the guys in front of him and wasn’t paying too close attention or didn’t hear necessarily from the spotter or what, but he just started shading down and got him free aero wise and then I was just kind of wrecked.”
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