The Sprint Cup Series had the week off, but it was no time to rest for the Penske team.

Kurt Busch and Bill Elliott two former NASCAR Sprint Cup champions spent some time at Gresham Motorsports Park, a refurbished facility located about an hour northeast of Atlanta.

On Tuesday, Kurt Busch tested his No. 2 Dodge on the newly paved half-mile paved oval, which was previously known as Peach State Speedway.

“This is a great place to test,” Busch said in a press release. “The track is really repeatable. The track is new and it’s and it’s nice and smooth. It has a lot of grip.

“If you can run the bottom, it’s pretty fast. It’s going to be really fast in a year or two when it wears out a little.”

Kurt Busch the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway winner , was testing at Gresham Motorsports Park getting ready for the race at Martinsville later this month. The #2 Penske Dodge had the new spoiler on the rear deck lid. Busch’s Penske Racing teammate, Justin Allgaier, also participated in the test. Allgaier competes full time in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series.

Saturday night Bill Elliott, watched from the spotter’s stand  as his his 14-year-old son, Chase Elliott, finished second in the CRA Super Late Model 125 on the lightning-fast layout.

  

Augie Grill of Birmingham, Ala. dominated Saturday’s event by leading 110 of 125 laps. His winning pass came on lap 16 when he dove underneath leader Ryan Lawler in Turn 1. Grill would never be seriously challenged for the lead during the remainder of the race.

“I had a lot of fun,” said Grill, who won the pole but started third based on the inversion procedure. “My goal, normally, in a race is to get to the front as quick as I can. That was my goal tonight. We were able to get to the front in 15 laps. I feel safe when I’m out front.

“We had a great car. It was a good night.”

Elliott held off fellow Georgia residents Bubba Pollard, Jason Hogan and Mike Garvey to claim the runner-up spot.

Grill’s victory assured him a starting berth in the track’s signature event, the World Crown 300, which is held each November.

“That’s pretty neat,” Grill said. “Now we can come experiment for the World Crown and see if we can qualify faster.”

Jeff Hood  at
RacinToday.com contributed to this report

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I don’t see it happing in the near future because Nascar”s eyes will be watching.

Mike Hembree: at Speed Tv wrote this report.

Driver Brad Keselowski expressed support for NASCAR Tuesday after the sanctioning body announced its decision to place driver Carl Edwards on a three-race probation  for his role in a late-race accident Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Edwards bumped Keselowski with two laps remaining in the race, sending Keselowski’s car high into the air before it slammed to the race surface on its roof.

“I support NASCAR in the decision they communicated today,” Keselowski said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon. “They are not in an enviable position when it comes to these matters, but they do an outstanding job. The unfortunate part about what happened on Sunday is that it has overshadowed a win (by his teammate, Kurt Busch) and an overall solid performance by Penske Racing at Atlanta.”

  

Edwards could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

NASCAR’s decision appears to leave drivers with a lot of room to maneuver under and around the rules of the game in deciding how to deal with confrontation.

The line that NASCAR says drivers can’t cross remains rather ill-defined, in other words.

“If you draw a line in the sand, then you’re saying you can do everything up to that line and it’s OK, but anything over that, it’s not,” driver David Reutimann said Tuesday during a teleconference after NASCAR’s announcement. “I don’t think you can do that. It’s not a perfect system, nor will it ever be.

“We’re a bunch of emotional guys out there, and sometimes when we put the helmet on … some of us don’t always think as clearly as we probably ought to, especially myself.

“It’s complicated, and I would not want to have NASCAR’s job in this deal. But I think they’ve done a good job with this, with the penalties so far, and hopefully everybody can just go on and race and we won’t have issues anymore. That would be great.”

Of course, that’s also unlikely. Boys will be boys, and NASCAR already has told them to “have at it.”

One of the problems linked to aggressive and retaliatory racing is that innocent drivers often become involved in accidents caused by road rage, a point that bothers Reutimann.

“I think the thing that ticks you off is getting caught up in somebody else’s retaliation,” he said. “I think that really aggravates you to the point where you’re like, man, I didn’t do anything wrong, I just got caught up in a deal. Sometimes that happens.”

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Harvick led 100 of 130 laps in the second race of the Camping World Truck season and drove off fom Kyle Busch at the end, having a 1.3 second lead taking the win over Busch. They both were driving their own Trucks.

Harvick led the final 56 laps.

“I never let off over I don’t know how many laps (to the finish),” Harvick said. “The only chance they had was on the restarts. It was a lot of fun. We’ll keep at it.”

Harvick’s truck handled great all day and the team only had to make one minor tire-pressure change all day.

Harvick has won in all three major NASCAR series at Atlanta and at Phoenix International Raceway.

  

Following Busch at the finish were Aric Almirola, Steve Wallace in his Truck debut and Todd Bodine rouding out the top five.

Rookie Austin Dillon, running the No. 3 truck for Richard Childress Racing, finished 10th. The finish was a boost for Dillon, who crashed at the start of the Truck opener at Daytona International Speedway last month. “It was a long wait to get back in it again,” Dillon said. “I’ve been thinking all this time about what I could have done differently at Daytona.”

Pole winner Ron Hornaday crashed out after 22 laps his tire got cut after he and Busch got together earlier in the race in a three wide battle with Matt Crafton. Crafton was involved in three cautions and finished 27th.

Busch was in the middle of the accident that booted Hornaday from the competition.

“We went three wide into there, and when I got down there I don’t know if Crafton went up or the 33 (Hornaday) came down, but I got squeezed in the middle,”

Busch said. The contact caused minor right-front damage to Busch’s truck.
Busch was much more concerned with an incident that involved Boris Said in the day’s final Sprint Cup practice.

“He shouldn’t even be on the track,” Busch said of Said. “He bought his way into points and a ride. He was running in the middle of the track when he should have been on the outside.”

LINK > RACE RESULTS: Atlanta 200 – ATLANTA

Author:
Mike Hembree from Seed TV contributed to this report

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And, as always, it ought to be a flat-out hard racing at the 1.54-mile AMS oval, one of the fastest tracks on the circuit.

Kyle Busch, one of the race favorites has four victories in just five NCWTS starts here. At the season-opening race at Daytona International Speedway, both Busch and teammate Tayler Malsam were caught in crashes not of their own making.

“Our short-term goals for this year are to just go out and try to win a race. I want to win a race, of course, but to go out and win multiple races would be a success,” said Kyle Busch, who is in his first year of NASCAR team ownership. “To win a race for Brian Ickler and to win a race for Tayler Malsam – we at least need three wins out of the shop this year, one for all three drivers – in order for it to be a success, in my book.”

Ron Hornaday Jr is another to contender to win at Atlanta he is a four-time and defending Truck Series champion . Out of the Kevin Harvick Inc. stables. Hornaday got a new crew chief this year in Dave Fuge, who lasted just one race before replaced by Doug George.

  

In nine races at AMS, Hornaday has one victory, four top-five and five top-10 finishes, and he and his No. 33 Longhorn Chevrolet likely will be strong on Saturday.

Steve Wallace, who will make his Truck Series debut Saturday. Will be driving for Billy Ballew Motorsports in the No.15 Red Top Auto Auction Toyota.

Wallace, who nornaly drives in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, said he will be ready to get it on in Hot ‘Lanta.

“This is going to be awesome,” said Wallace. “I’m really excited about getting behind the wheel of a truck. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I can’t think of a better way to start things off than driving for Billy . His teams run so well at Atlanta, which gives me a lot of confidence going into the weekend.”

Geoff Bodine, 60, is on the entry list to drive the No. 95 Team Gill Racing truck, which was driven by Johnny Benson in the season-opening race last month at Daytona.

Bodine helped make U.S. history last weekend at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. His Bo-Dyn four-man bobsled crew, led by driver Steve Holcomb, won America’s first gold medal in that competition since 1948.

Team owner Ballew is a Georgia native, hailing from Blairsville, and the team has enjoyed tremendous success at AMS, where it has three Truck Series race victories.

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This will be Jr’s first pole in almost two years, his last came in April 2008 A Texas Motor Speedway.

Earnhart’s lap is the fastest lap recorded with the COT Sprint Cup car.

Kyle Busch (192.280), Juan Pablo Montoya (192.106), Mark Martin (191.814) and Jeff Gordon (191.774), rounded off the top five for Sundays Kobalt Tools 500.

  

Earnhardt Jr. said his pole run “definitely a step in the right direction. I hope we’ll see these kinds of improvements on Sunday in our race team. And I think we will. If we keep performing like this, it should start leaking over into our car on Sunday.”

Earnhardt Jr. has finishes of second, 32nd and 16th through the first three races of the season. He is 15th in the point standings.

Busch said the high speeds are fun, , but the track demands attention.

“The only thing I’ve ever really been able to give a close description of to compare it to is this: Pick your favorite (interstate) off ramp that’s a round one and drive it as hard as you can and see if it sticks,” he said. “Now this is like doing that off ramp while it’s raining.

“But it’s a fun racetrack. The sensation doesn’t really hit you because the corners are wide. You’ve got a lot of room off 2 and 4.”

Driver that did not qualify for Sundays race were Casey Mears, Terry Cook and  Aric Almirola .

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With the high speeds and close finishes the Kobalt Tools 500 should be a great race. Hopefully Atlanta Motor Speedway will provide us with another thrilling finish like in 2005 when Carl Edwards won by just .028 seconds? Or a repeat of 2001 when Kevin Harvick won by just .006 seconds? We could be in for another great race this weekend in Atlanta.

Atlanta Motor Speedway is l.54 mile quad-oval with 24 degrees of banking in the turns. At Atlanta the cars will not have restrictor plates, average speeds is even faster than the superspeedways of Daytona and Talladega. This is a very fast race track that has a history of truly great racing.

The qualifying record in Atlanta is 197.478 MPH making it one of the fastest race tracks on the NASCAR schedule.

Will Jimmie Johnson be able to win his third straight Sprint Cup victory Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway?

  

The way the 48 team is racing so far it would be a good bet they will. In fact, it’s easy to consider him the race favorite entering the fourth event of the year after he won race two at California and then passing his teammate Jeff Gordon late in the race to a win at Las Vegas last week.

Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus seem to have things going early this season in their search for a fifth straight championship, statistics make success this weekend well within their reach.

Of all current drivers, Johnson is fourth behind only Bobby Labonte (6), Bill Elliott (5) and Jeff Gordon (4) in career victories at AMS.

“We’re excited to have won the last two weeks, but there’s still a lot of work going on,” Johnson said Tuesday. “We’re looking forward to getting on the racetrack and looking for a third.”

Dale Earnhardt JR is looking forward to racing at Atlanta. This one of his best non-resrictor-plate races were won the March 2004 race.

His average finish there is 11.9, and he has 10 career top-10 finishes at Atlanta, his last coming in March 2008 when he finished third.

“We’ve always run pretty good at Atlanta, so I look forward to going there,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It’s a wide track, and it gets slick. Atlanta is a driver’s track – if one groove doesn’t work, then you can find another one. It’s a fun track, and it’s a fast track.”

This weekend NASCAR honors Wendell Scott, the first African-American to win at NASCAR’s highest level. Scott’s first NASCAR start came on March 4th, 1961 in Spartanburg, SC. Two years later Scott would pick up a victory in Jacksonville, FL on December 1st, 1963

All of the cars this weekend will carry a special decal commemorating the event.

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