Two Stewart-Haas Racing teams penalized before cars even hit the track at Atlanta

Coming into a year where they badly needed to show speed and make fewer mistakes, Stewart-Haas Racing is off to the worst start possible at Atlanta Motor Speedway. 

Before cars have even hit the track for Saturday’s qualifying session at Atlanta, the cars of Ryan Preece and Noah Gragson both had roof rail deflectors confiscated by the sanctioning body on Friday afternoon, per NASCAR.com. Any possible penalties for the infraction would be announced next week, after Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400. Stewart-Haas had a similar issue last season with Chase Briscoe, whose team had a counterfeit part confiscated after the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, an L3 level penalty. 

Coming off a Daytona 500 where the team had two cars place inside the top 10, with Noah Gragson in ninth and Chase Briscoe in 10th, respectively, many fans had confidence in the team’s superspeedway abilities with the circuit heading to another drafting track in Atlanta. Now, some of that optimism is dashed, with potential consequences looming for the organization regardless of what happens on the racetrack this weekend. 

The good news is that no crew members on either team were ejected, which has happened in the past for inspection-based issues, with the car chief, and in rare instances, the crew chief, being ejected from the facility. Both Gragson and Preece will have all of their normal team members there as they try to win their way into the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs on Sunday. 

The No. 47 team of Ricky Stenhouse wasn't so lucky, however, as they failed pre-qualifying inspection twice, which resulted in the ejection of their engineer and loss of pit selection, which could prove costly if pit road is busy during green flag pit stops. Losing pit selection means Stenhouse could be placed in the middle of the pit lane madness come raceday no matter how well he qualifies on Saturday morning.

Despite the penalty, the team will move on to qualifying Saturday morning (11:30 a.m. ET, FS1 PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and the Ambetter Health 400 (3 p.m. ET, Fox, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), which is the second race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season.