Weather Cancels Cup Qualifying; Tyler Reddick to Start 1st

A lightning hold and a subsequent wet-weather band of showers in the area of EchoPark Speedway, located in Hampton, GA, forced NASCAR to cancel NASCAR Cup Series qualifying for Sunday's Autotrader 400 on Saturday morning.

As a result of the cancellation of the qualifying session, the 38-car NASCAR Cup Series field will have its starting lineup set by the NASCAR metric formula, which takes a weighted average of several on-track performance metrics including finishing position of the last race.

Tyler Reddick, who scored the victory in the season-opening Daytona 500 a weekend ago, will start Sunday's race at EchoPark Speedway from the pole position, as he had the best metric score (1.000) of anyone in the field.

NEWS: #BuschLightPole qualifying at @EchoParkSpdwy has been canceled due to weather in the area.

The lineup will be set per the rule book, with @TylerReddick starting on the pole.
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) February 21, 2026

Reddick will be joined on the front row by Joey Logano, a three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr., a superspeedway ace who finished second in last weekend's Daytona 500, will start from the third position in the No. 47 Hyak Motorsports Chevrolet, and he'll be joined by Chase Elliott, a two-time Atlanta race winner and 2020 Cup Series champion, in Row 2.

Brad Keselowski, Zane Smith, Chris Buescher, Riley Herbst, Bubba Wallace, and Josh Berry will round out the top-10 starters for Sunday's Autotrader 400 at EchoPark Speedway.

The Autotrader 400 at EchoPark Speedway is scheduled for Sunday, February 22 and will be televised on FOX with television coverage to begin at 3:00 PM ET. The Performance Racing Network (PRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the event.

Autotrader 400 Starting Lineup

Pos	Car	Driver	Metric Score
1	45	Tyler Reddick	1.000
2	22	Joey Logano	2.700
3	47	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	2.900
4	9	Chase Elliott	3.700
5	6	Brad Keselowski	5.300
6	38	Zane Smith	5.400
7	17	Chris Buescher	7.000
8	35	Riley Herbst	8.900
9	23	Bubba Wallace	9.400
10	21	Josh Berry	10.200
11	4	Noah Gragson	12.500
12	7	Daniel Suarez	12.700
13	24	William Byron	13.800
14	8	Kyle Busch	14.700
15	77	Carson Hocevar	15.300
16	5	Kyle Larson	15.700
17	10	Ty Dillon	15.800
18	51	Cody Ware	18.200
19	16	AJ Allmendinger	19.900
20	71	Michael McDowell	20.500
21	1	Ross Chastain	20.900
22	12	Ryan Blaney	21.900
23	43	Erik Jones	22.200
24	42	John Hunter Nemechek	23.900
25	54	Ty Gibbs	23.900
26	60	Ryan Preece	24.700
27	41	Cole Custer	25.200
28	97	Shane van Gisbergen	29.700
29	11	Denny Hamlin	31.900
30	2	Austin Cindric	32.800
31	88	Connor Zilisch #	33.600
32	20	Christopher Bell	34.100
33	3	Austin Dillon	35.800
34	19	Chase Briscoe	36.600
35	34	Todd Gilliland	38.100
36	48	Alex Bowman	39.100
37	78*	BJ McLeod	40.700
38	44*	JJ Yeley (i)	41.900