(Photo: Kyle Ritchie | The Podium Finish)
HAMPTON, Ga. — Eighteen races down, eighteen races to go.
Certainly, the first 18 have been forgettable for Aric Almirola. The Tampa, Florida native has recorded just one top 10 in 2023 and sits 27th in driver’s points, 81 below the cutline.
With eight races remaining in the regular season, Almirola, however, said his team is in the midst of a window of opportunity. He feels confident about his chances in five of the remaining eight races before the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs commence, and that starts with the Quaker State 400 available at Walmart at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he’s on the pole.
“It’s go time. You’ve got to take advantage of every opportunity and you’ve got to maximize every opportunity,” Amirola said after a lap of 31.261 seconds to take his fifth career pole. “You’ve got to make bold moves in the race car. You’ve got to make bold moves pit strategy-wise. You’ve got to do whatever it takes because you’re not going to get a lot of opportunities. If you were one of the cars that has a consistent chance to win, you’ve probably already locked yourselves in the playoffs or you feel pretty good about where you’re at in points.
“For the guys like myself that is further down in points, we’ve got rare opportunities to win races because we just haven’t shown up with the consistent speed we need to put ourselves in position to win, so absolutely. When we show up to a place like this and we know we have fast race cars, I blew a right-rear tire leading here last year with 40-50 laps to go, so we know coming here that this is an opportunity race for us and it is absolutely go time. Bring the best race car we can. Bring as much speed as we can.”
The Ford camp has struggled throughout the 2023 campaign as a whole, but Stewart-Haas Racing has had a particularly troubling season. Both Ford victories came via Team Penske when Joey Logano won the Atlanta spring race and when Ryan Blaney won the Coca-Cola 600 over Memorial Day weekend.
Kevin Harvick has been the most consistent SHR car, but despite sitting seventh in points, the retiring 47-year-old hasn’t finished better than 10th over the last five races. Ryan Preece is next among the bunch 25th in points and without a top 10, while Chase Briscoe is 31st after getting handed an L3 penalty for getting caught with a counterfeit part in the Coca-Cola 600.
SHR and Ford have been the best on drafting tracks and short tracks this season. That’s why Almirola is intrigued about the upcoming batch of races.
(Photo: Trish McCormack | The Podium Finish)
“When I look at these few races ahead of us, here, Loudon, Michigan, Richmond and then Daytona the last race, I think those are five opportunities of the next eight races that I feel like we have a legitimate shot to go and win if we do everything right,” Almirola said. “I look at the schedule going forward and I feel like, here is a great place for us. I look at Loudon as a great place for us. We went to Michigan and I felt like we learned a lot. We had a great tire test there a month ago, maybe two months ago. I felt really good about that. Look at Richmond, I’ve run really, really good at Richmond throughout my entire career. Our short-track program is really good at Stewart-Haas Racing. No doubt, we have to continue to work on our mile-and-a-half program and our downforce-type racetracks, but our short-track package is really good.
“I think about the year we’ve had and so much bad luck, and it certainly tested our race team, tested the morale of everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing just because we’re not going to victory lane and we’re not getting the results that we want, but everybody is continuing to work hard and grind, just like in 2021 and hopefully we’ll see some of that reward and that payoff and we’ll go to victory lane.”
Before the reconfiguration, Almirola said that Atlanta was one of his favorite tracks. But with two of this three Cup Series victories on superspeedways, he recognizes that the new configuration suits his style better.
“The cars we have, the speed we have, the engines from Doug Yates and Roush Yates Engines, so I feel like all of that together as a package, this track and the new pavement certainly suits me better for having more opportunity to win,” he said. “[Old Atlanta] was one of my favorite racetracks to race at, but I was average at that racetrack if you look at my results. This racetrack has been better for me, and I guess you could say that I am a pretty decent superspeedway type racer and now that they’ve repaved this racetrack it races a lot more like a superspeedway, so I would say this new track configuration suits my style.”
Sunday’s race is set for 7 p.m. ET on USA Network. Chase Elliott is the defending winner.
