atlanta motor speedway Tag

By David Morgan, Associate Editor Atlanta Motor Speedway is back. In the early 2000’s, the 1.5-mile quad-oval earned a reputation for delivering photo finishes with three of the closest finishes in NASCAR Cup Series coming over a span from 2000 to 2005. However, as the pavement aged, the track’s tendency for those types of finishes faded with it. Enter the 2022 season and a reconfiguration masterminded by Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith, which ramped up the banking in the turns and narrowed the racing surface to transform the track into aRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. — It was a race of remarkable ebb and flow. It was race of breathtaking four-wide action into corners not built to accommodate such derring-do. And it was totally appropriate that Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400 NASCAR Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway would end in a three-wide photo finish, with Trackhouse Racing’s Daniel Suárez eking out a victory over Ryan Blaney by what looked to be an inch or two at the finish line. NASCAR timing and scoring showed Suárez aheadRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. — When Kyle Busch sold his NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series team to Spire Motorsports, he didn’t surrender his prowess behind the wheel. Driving the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet in his first start of 2024, Busch inherited the lead from Grant Enfinger on Lap 129 of 135 and held off Ty Majeski and Corey Heim over the final five laps to win his seventh race at Atlanta Motor Speedway and the 65th of his career, extending his own series record. Enfinger wasRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. – Michael McDowell and Joey Logano performed their own version of “Trading Places” during NASCAR Cup Series time trials on Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. After finishing second to Logano in qualifying for the season-opening DAYTONA 500, McDowell will start his 467th Cup race from a position he has never occupied before—first on the grid—with Logano beside him in second. Having won the first Busch Light Pole Award of his career, McDowell will lead the field to green in Sunday’s Ambetter HealthRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor After a drenching weekend in Daytona, the NASCAR Cup Series sticks around on the East Coast as it heads to Atlanta Motor Speedway for the second superspeedway race of the season – Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400. Atlanta’s aging racing surface, which had been in place since 1997, held together as long as possible, but the 260 laps around the 1.5-mile track in July 2021 were the last on that particular surface as the track underwent a repave and reconfiguration for the 2022 season. The 24-degree bankingRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series schedule is finally here. After weeks of piecing together next year’s schedule like a puzzle, the full picture was finally revealed on Wednesday when the sanctioning body rolled out the full lineup of tracks and dates for NASCAR’s premier series. While there are many mainstays that remain in known positions on the calendar, there have also been a number of changes made to the schedule, including the debut of Iowa Speedway next June.  Since opening in 2006, the Rusty Wallace designedRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. – Neither an early spin nor damage to his No. 24 Chevrolet could prevent William Byron from winning Sunday night’s rain-shortened Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart at Atlanta Motor Speedway.   With a storm approaching the 1.54-mile track, Byron surged past AJ Allmendinger into the lead on Lap 167 and remained out from until an accident in Turn 3 involving Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ryan Preece and Bubba Wallace caused the seventh caution of the evening on Lap 178.  With Byron outRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. — Grabbing the lead on an overtime restart as Saturday night’s Alsco Uniforms 250 went six laps past its posted distance, John Hunter Nemechek streaked to his third NASCAR Xfinity Series victory of the season.  The only time Nemechek led was during the overtime, after a push from Daniel Hemric powered him into the lead on the final restart.   Nemechek won for the first time at Atlanta Motor Speedway and for the fifth time in his career, finishing .245 seconds aheadRead More

By Matt Weaver, Special Contributor That was certainly a race weekend, wasn’t it? Atlanta Motor SpeedwayAtlantadegaAtlanta Superduperspeedway Whatever you want to call it nowadays, the Ambetter Health 400 weekend certainly produced no shortage of topics: The Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski superspeedway duelThe racing product prior to the final green flag runThe crashing product on Saturday during a Trucks, Xfinity doubleheaderThe Josh Williams situation That is to say nothing of the lingering effects in the aftermath of the historic penalties doled out to Hendrick Motorsports and Kaulig Racing PLUS the Denny HamlinRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer Atlanta Motor Speedway has become a NASCAR Cup Series venue Corey LaJoie can shine on a regular basis. Since the 1.5-mile circuit became a superspeedway last year, the Spire Motorsports driver has become a frequent contender for strong results. More so, being in the hunt for the win when it mattered most. Although LaJoie’s No. 7 Celsius Chevrolet Camaro didn’t lead a single lap compared to 19 laps last summer when he was two laps away from victory, he improved his career-best Cup result of fifthRead More