Police find stolen No. 44 car

The Team Xtreme No. 44 car that had been stolen from a Georgia hotel parking lot was found early Saturday morning.

Gwinnett County police found the car in Loganville, Georgia -- northwest of Atlanta.

Gwinnett County Police Department spokesman Officer Jeffery Richter said a motorist called in seeing the car on the side of Lenora Road near the intersection of Pate Road near Loganville, Ga., at 2:30 a.m. Saturday. Officers arrived on the scene and secured the vehicle.

"It was right outside the road," Richter said. "It was just over on the grassy area of the shoulder."

Richter said a couple of ramps and some strapping were also left at the scene but no other evidence.

The team posted several photos of the No. 44 car Saturday, one day after it was stolen from a hotel parking lot near Atlanta Motor Speedway, the site of Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race.

The team also tweeted a pictured of team owner John Cohen standing in front of the No. 44 Chevrolet, which was valued at $250,000 and appears undamaged.

The theft of the car forced Travis Kvapil and the No. 44 team to withdraw from the race before they had a chance to qualify.

Video obtained by police shows that the incident happened at 5:34 a.m. in the parking lot of the Drury Inn in Morrow, Georgia.The car, along with the pickup truck and trailer -- which included a spare engine valued at $100,000 and racing equipment valued at $17,500 -- that were hauling it, was snatched just a few hours before Kvapil was to run in qualifying.

Sgt. Larry Oglesby, a detective with the Morrow Police Department, confirmed Saturday that he has a person of interest in the case.

The pickup truck that pulled the hauler was located in Stockbridge, Georgia, Oglesby said, by a citizen driving by on a side street. The trailer still has not been located.

Cohen was relieved that at least the car, which he said is the most consistently fast in his fleet, was found.

"You can't buy that back or (the) time put into it," he said.

The recovery of the car will help the low-budget team go forward with its plans to race at Las Vegas next weekend.

Normally, the No. 44 car would have been transported using the team's hauler, an 18-wheel tractor trailer. But, with a winter storm moving through the Southeast this week, Cohen sent only the hauler to Atlanta a couple of days early.

ESPN.com's Bob Pockrass and The Associated Press contributed to this report.