atlanta motor speedway Tag

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
By Matt Weaver, Special Contributor There was a moment with about five laps to go in the Ambetter Health 400 that Joey Logano thought ‘I screwed up’ with the most dominant car of the race. Logano had led 139 laps of the 255 completed to that point and was able to drive it through the field anytime circumstances separated him from clean air. To that point, he had done it again on the final run and had pulled himself side-by-side with leader Brad Keselowski but couldn’t bring himself to clear hisRead More
By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. – In a race that started in chaos and ended in bedlam on the last lap, Austin Hill won his third NASCAR Xfinity Series race of the season, beating Daniel Hemric to the checkered flag in Saturday’s RAPTOR King of the Tough 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.  With his family in attendance, the Winston, Ga., native, led three times for a race-high 103 laps and dominated an event that featured a record 12 cautions for 68 laps.  NASCAR called the final yellowRead More
By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. – Christian Eckes finished where he started Saturday’s Fr8 208 NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway—with a lot of turmoil in between.  Eckes claimed his second victory in the series in overtime, choosing the bottom lane and front-row position for a restart on lap 136 of 137.   After leading the first 30-lap stage of the race wire-to-wire, however, Eckes sped on pit road and lost track position. He spent the rest of the event working his way backRead More
By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. – Joey Logano added another memory at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Saturday, and seven other Ford drivers followed behind him.  Covering the 1.540-mile distance in 31.256 seconds (177.374 mph), Logano won the pole for Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400 (3 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and led a parade of eight Ford drivers into the top eight starting positions.  That’s the first time since 1965 at Beltsville (Md.) that Fords have qualified for the top eight spots on theRead More