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The fuse was lit around 8:55 p.m., roughly Lap 95, when crew chief Chris Gabehart told driver Denny Hamlin that he didn’t think the Quaker State 400 would reach its scheduled conclusion on Lap 260.
To be clear, this wasn’t a sudden revelation, as the forecast had been a talking point for days leading up to arriving at Atlanta Motor Speedway but it did start to become more tangible and more urgent as the sun faded below the horizon.
Optimistically, there was a version of the forecast where rain would not arrive until closer to midnight but that sentiment started to wane. Rain was coming soon and it was coming imminently.
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With that understanding, the action around the high-banked intermediate-superspeedway hybrid ramped-up considerably and produced one of the most dramatic races in quite some time — ultimately concluding with a William Byron victory in Hampton, Georgia.
The path there was fraught with nervous strategic decisions, frantic door-to-door competition and a clock that was starting to run out with no one knowing exactly when the clock would expire. Would it be rain or for something else best articulated by crew chief Randall Burnett to Kyle Busch.
“For the L word, if you know what I mean.”
Lightning
That was on Lap 100, five laps after Gabehart offered the same prognostication to Hamlin, for those keeping count.
At this point, Byron was outside of the top-15, following a pit road safety penalty and a Lap 79 spin that easily could have unraveled their entire race because this generation of race car is absolutely ill in deep lap traffic.
“So, we made a lot of adjustments,” Byron said. “We changed a lot of things, rounds in all four corners and probably air pressure, too, and got it to where it was competitive. It was competitive for 15 laps, and then I was just kind of on pins and needles after that. I would make some mistakes because either I’d put myself in some bad positions aero wise and lose grip or just not trust the car.”
Meanwhile, up front, the race to get track position before the rain began in earnest with a moderately calm single-file affair becoming a non-stop battle of blocks and side-drafting between Chris Buescher, Ryan Blaney, Brad Keselowski and Austin Cindric.
It was a masterclass of the superspeedway genre with the underlying threat that the race would reach its official distance, where the it could be called by Cup Series officials without needing to be made up the next day, by Lap 160.
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There was the crash on Lap 123 between Corey Lajoie, Ross Chastain and Tyler Reddick — one that ended the day for Chastain and ended a chance to contend for Lajoie.
At this point, another transmission of note, from crew chief Adam Stevens to Christopher Bell.
“There is weather coming and it’s a matter of how much time, but we are going to get hit.”
Definitively.
Imminently.
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Ultimately, one of the best superspeedway side-drafters and blockers of his era in Keselowski, did what he always seems to do in this scenario and took the lead. Despite a furious attempt from ex-teammate Ryan Blaney, Keselowski would not be overtaken.
By this point, Lap 140, Byron is still mired in deep traffic just trying to hang onto a car that was past that 15-lap threshold where he felt like he could driver with confidence. He needed track position, bad.
“Doing what I can, just on pins and needles,” he told crew chief Rudy Fugle and spotter Branden Lines.
Shortly after, Austin Dillon got pinched into the wall, the byproduct of really hard racing in the middle of the pack but the race stayed green. Keselowski, still out front, had veteran spotter TJ Majors sounding like an auctioneer as he aided the No. 6 in keeping all comers behind him.
Majors, as any Dale Earnhardt Jr. fan can attest, remains one of the absolute best at calling this style of racing from the spotter’s stand.
The rain, by the way, had arrived.
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A glance at the fuse showed nothing left to burn, just the bare threads hanging on before reaching the figurative dynamite.
And then … a caution on Lap 156, four laps short of the second stage break and the official race distance, a false alarm of an explosion but one with consequence. Denny Hamlin had spun after Alex Bowman broke traction under him.
It was decision time for Keselowski crew chief Matt McCall, who has just 15 laps or so of green flag fuel remaining before absolutely needing to pit. A decision to stay out would mean immediiately needing it to rain to result in a win.
Pitting would get them to the scheduled finish, with a chance to battle it out to Lap 260 with one of the best cars on the track, but no guarantee with a radar like looked like an abstract of red, yellows and green on an otherwise black canvas.
“There’s no good call here. It is what it is.”
Keselowski
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Byron meanwhile, is 16th and has enough fuel by virtue of pitting after the Hamlin crash to stay out until Lap 200, an obvious decision that allowed them to restart fourth once the race resumed. It’s now past the second stage, the race is official and Fugle thinks Byron is going to have to race this out for a while longer yet.
“I was probably 20 laps off,” Fugle said afterwards. “So, whatever that was on time, I’m terrible. My wife is an earth science teacher and did some meteorology stuff. I was hoping some of that would rub off, but it hasn’t, so still have a ways to go.”
Green flag on Lap 166 and Byron pushes AJ Allmendinger to the lead. Everyone in the arena knows the stakes. The night sky occasionally lights up as lightning teases its eventual arrival. The strikes are still further than eight miles out, the point NASCAR rules necessitate a 30-minute delay, and one that usually lasts much longer because the rain follows.
But not yet.
It’s Lap 170 and Byron takes the lead. It’s Lap 172 and Kevin Harvick spins, but no caution. Allmendinger, Daniel Suárez and Michael McDowell are trying everything they can to get around the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 before the weather moves in for good.
Every lap was like the final lap because it very well could be.
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Lap 178: Ryan Preece spin in Turn 3, contact with Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and a very light rain is being reported in Turns 1 and 2.
“I honestly don’t get too excited,” Byron said of how he felt in real time. “I feel like for me, I’ve never had a rain win, so I was like, ‘sure enough, with me leading, this isn’t going to happen like this.’ So, I’m like, just thinking about what lane I’m going to choose.
“I think as soon as the caution came out, I asked ‘what lane are we going to choose’ because I didn’t even want to think about the possibility of rain and coming down pit road. All that was secondary to me. I was just thinking about, okay, how can we control the race so when the next caution comes out for rain we’re in a good spot.”
That’s when Fugle and spotter Branden Line said the rain was starting to pick up. It was. Legitimately. Dollops of precipitation. Shortly thereafter, on Lap 185, the field was brough down pit road and drivers were allowed out of their cars.
By this point, a makeshift Victory Lane was being set up inside of the media center, and all was left to do was for the others to wonder what they could have done.
“I needed a bigger push from behind,” said Suárez.
“Trying to lead the race was the tough thing for me, because I had too much drag in the race car,” Allmendinger said.
Not a soul after the race said NASCAR called the race too soon, something they made official within five minutes after cars were called down pit road, coinciding with a downpour in which the track was lost to the moisture — nomenclature for not having enough grip necessary to race on.
NASCAR has made some mistakes in the rain over the past several seasons, specifically, Texas fall 2020, New Hampshire summer 2021 and Daytona fall 2022. They acted proactively this time rather than reactively and no one near the front blamed them.
The timer went off and there was nothing left but the figurative smoke.
“There was a natural caution that caused that,” said Kyle Busch. “So there was a 15 minute lull time where we could be racing but it just got wet, and at these speeds here, I was glad to air on the side of caution. “
Suárez thought NASCAR may have had five minutes of racing left, and maybe that could have sent him to Victory Lane, but he wasn’t bent out of shape over it.
“We’ve had some situations where they kept us racing until the very last minute, and the rain comes aggressively and it became a s–t show,” Suárez said. “A few minutes, more or less, just doesn’t make a difference to me, even if I wanted another chance.”
The end result was Byron in Victory Lane, his league leading fourth win of the season, which also gave him both the championship points lead and the all-important playoff points lead. Again, it’s a remarkable conclusion for a team that had two tires off the ground when it spun into the infield, losing a lap in the process.
He thought the car was going to be damaged beyond repair with a broken toe link or upper control arm. He had to be talked off a ledge a little bit by Fugle.
“I think it’s easy to give up, kind of pack it in,” Byron said. “Just be like, ‘okay, we’re a lap down but we’ll try to get the Lucky Dog and try to have a solid finish.’ We kept working on the car. We got aggressive with the changes to try to make the car have a better balance and then got aggressive with the strategy, too.
“I could tell in Rudy’s tone (that) he never gave up and he was constantly pumping me up saying the car is fine, just go drive the heck out of it and see what happens.”
What happened, as the figurative lit fuse kept ticking, is that the de facto championship favorite through mid-May went and stole a win from the jaws of defeat.
Now it just feels like a matter of time before Byron, Fugle and the No. 24 team are racing for a championship at Phoenix in November.
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Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.