William Sawalich driving on Atlanta Motor Speedway during the Bennett Transportation & Logictics 350 (Photo by: Hayden Hutchison | The Podium Finish)
HAMPTON, Ga. — William Sawalich bounced back from a rough outing Daytona with solid top 10 finish in Saturday night’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
It is hard enough to earn two strong finishes at superspeedway tracks in NASCAR during back-to-back weeks,. However, Sawalich rebounded from a poor Daytona result to a strong finish in Atlanta.
The versatile Sawalich, 18, left the season-opener looking for more after being involved in an incident that resulted in a 28th position finish. Luckily, he only had to wait a week to right the ship in the second race of the 2025 season.
Sawalich’s weekend in Atlanta began decently when he posted an 11th place result in qualifying. In the first two races of the season, the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing team has shown strong speed in qualifying having qualified fifth in Daytona.
In Saturday’s race, the Minnesota native lined up to restart in 13th with four laps remaining. The No. 18 was never in prime position to battle for the race win in the closing few laps.
However, Sawalich battled his way to a ninth place finish in the Bennett Transportation & Logistics 250. This was his first career top 10 result in only his fifth NASCAR XFINITY Series start. After two races, the freshman racer sits in 17th in the driver’s point standings.
After the race, Sawalich spoke about what he learned in the race at Atlanta.
“I learned a lot about how to stay in the draft and how to manage your position and how to manage runs,” Sawalich observed. “We had a good Soundgear GR Supra today. We had some speed — not so much in the first and second stage, but brought it together for the third stage and we had good pit stops and did the little things right today.”
In the midst of his first full-time season in the XFINITY Series with Joe Gibbs Racing, Sawalich and his No. 18 Toyota GAZOO Racing team had a solid day at the refit 1.54-mile superspeedway as the freshman racer has logged finishes of 24th, 33rd, 13th, 28th and ninth in his first five starts in this division.
Sawalich, the two-time and 2024 ARCA Menards Series East champion, has a challenge ahead of him next week. He will be making his XFINITY Series road course debut at Circuit of the Americas (Saturday, Mar. 1 at 2:30 p.m. ET on The CW) as he looks to carry bring momentum from Atlanta to the renowned road course outside Austin, Texas.
