Watch The NASCAR Xfinity Race This Weekend With Special Guest Alanis King

The forecast calls for a less than 10% chance of rain in Atlanta this weekend, which means that this Saturday you should join your Autopian pals and special guest Alanis King at 5:00 PM to watch the NASCAR Xfinity race. It’ll be fun.

In addition to contributing some fun reviews here, Alanis is a podcaster, contributor editor at Road & Track, writer, has a YouTube channel, and once took NASCAR driver Tyler Reddick to Medieval Times. She’s also got a new motorsports podcast called “Mics Are Hot” that covers NASCAR.

All this means she’ll be the perfect addition to our little Xfinity watch party. If you missed last week’s Daytona conversation with Bozi Tatarevic, I’ll catch you up a little bit on this little experiment I’ve got going on here.

Wait, What Is This?

I’ve decided we, collectively, will watch all of the Xfinity NASCAR races this year for various reasons, including the fact that I think it’s some of the best racing every weekend with a high-quality mix of drivers in some loud, old-school stock cars. Also, the races are generally shorter and on Saturdays, which makes them easier to watch. And, finally, our friend and contributor Parker Kligerman is running the full season.

How Do I Do This?

The race will be broadcast on FS1 and FoxSports.com, and there are some other ways to watch it. We’ll be following the action in our Discord, which you can join here. The race is tomorrow, Saturday, at 5:00 PM and will run for a couple of hours. The full name of the race is the RAPTOR King of Tough 250, because NASCAR has the best names. Just hop into the Discord around that time and we’ll share some wisdom.

We had Bozi last week and he provided some excellent insight:

In addition to guest intel, it’s also a safe place to come and ask questions about the racing, et cetera. It’s fun!

What Did I Miss Last Week? Catch Me Up

Austin Hill, who is the driver voted most likely to dress as Shrek for Halloween, managed his third consecutive victory, so he’s now a lock for the playoffs. It’s the first race so it’s hard to put too much stock into what happened, but a lot of the people you’d expect to be fast were fast, including Riley Herbst and AJ Allmendinger.

Parker got caught up in an accident and was never able to get back on the lead lap, but had stage points from a strong finish earlier (you get points for finishing in the top ten of every stage) and so did alright.

Shane Van Gisbergen was strong all night, though also had issues, but still managed to finish in the 12th position in his first superspeedway race.

What Can I Expect From Atlanta?

At 1.5 miles of oval, Atlanta is technically an intermediate track, but it now sits at 28 degrees of banking thanks to a major repaving a couple of years ago. With a fresh racing surface and that big angle, it’s a fast circuit that allows for more than just pack-driving and promotes aggressive passing.

Last year, Parker led part of the race and was in line to maybe make a pass for the win when he got spun going towards the finish line as you can see in the video above.

This means that Parker finished 4th, backward, which is some Ricky Bobby shit. My guess is that, if he can stay out of trouble, this is one of the best chances for Parker to win at an intermediate track this season.

So, yeah, come watch the race with us. It’s not that long and it’s super loud and fun.