NASCAR Cup Series drivers and teams arrive at Atlanta Motor Speedway for Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 (3 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) fresh off a typically dramatic 500-lapper at the Bristol, Tenn. short track – full of all the emotions and urgency you would expect of a revised schedule that features three premier races in a 10-day stretch.
Settled in between a pair of short track events at Bristol (last week) and Martinsville, Va. (next week) in a week-and-a-half span, the potential for high drama at Atlanta this weekend is real, the competitive edge, palpable.
Defending Atlanta race winner Brad Keselowski shows up as the most recent series victor, earning the Bristol win last weekend in a race whose ending was so unpredictable that the Team Penske driver joked that he should consider playing the lottery after his winner’s press conference.
Keselowski motored on to the Bristol win after leader Denny Hamlin, who led a race-high 131 laps, crashed with five laps remaining and then with three laps to go, Keselowski’s teammate Joey Logano and Chase Elliott collided while dueling for the lead. All the action up front essentially left Keselowski in the cat-bird seat to hold the point for the last three laps and take his second victory in the last three races in the No. 2 Team Penske Ford.
This weekend’s 1.5-mile high banks in Atlanta, however, present a vastly different challenge from the Bristol half-miler. Only six drivers in the field have ever won a NASCAR Cup Series race at Atlanta before – Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin. Among those – Harvick, Keselowski, Johnson, Kurt Busch and Kyle Busch are all multi-time winners. Johnson’s five wins – twice back-to-back races (2007 sweep and 2015-2016) – are most among active drivers. And his 28 wins on 1.5-mile tracks are a series high.
An 11th-place at Bristol marked his first finish outside the top-10 for Harvick on the season, however, he still holds a 24-point edge over Logano in the championship standings. Atlanta is where Harvick scored his first career NASCAR Cup Series victory in an emotional drive for Richard Childress Racing after taking the seat for Dale Earnhardt following his death in the 2001 season-opening Daytona 500.
Georgia native Chase Elliott is third in the championship, 45 points behind Harvick. Keselowski is fourth and Alex Bowman is fifth.
Although not yet in the thick of the regular season championship standings, Joe Gibbs Racing has shown marked improvement from an unusually overall slow start to the season. Last year the JGR Toyota team won a modern-day record 19 of the 36 races – all four of its drivers hoisting trophies in 2019. But this season, it’s been a slow and steady rebound from a few rough early races.
Martin Truex Jr. is now ranked sixth in points, Hamlin (a two-race winner) is seventh and reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch is ninth. Erik Jones is 14th. None of them were ranked among the championship top 10 after the Phoenix race in March – the last race before the series took a two-month break for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Among them, Kyle Busch won at Atlanta in 2008 (the first Toyota win at the track) and 2013 and Hamlin’s only victory was 2012. Truex finished runner-up to Keselowski last year by .218-seconds and has finished eighth or better in seven of the last eight Atlanta races.
Four of the top-six ranked drivers have never won at Atlanta. For third place Elliott, it’s an especially important venue as it’s the Dawsonville, Ga. native’s home track. He’s certainly established himself a driver to beat since the sport resumed competition. His 6.75 average running position since the May 17 return is best in the series and he’s led laps in four of the five races in that time.
“The track hasn’t changed a ton these past few years,” Elliott said. “It has a lot of wear to it, a lot of character and a lot of bumps. There is a fine line of getting your car right. I’m excited about that.
“As a team we’ve had a lot of dialogue in trying to get our NAPA Chevrolet dialed in without having any practice, which is tough. I have a lot of confidence in my guys being able to get us close and giving us enough adjustability to where if we do miss it, one way or the other we can work on it throughout the race. I’m just looking forward to the race, obviously it’s my home track and any time you go to your home track, you want to be good.”
Source: Holly Cain | NASCAR Wire Service
