Posts Tagged ‘Sprint CupSeries’

Kurt Busch comes to defend his title at Atlanta in hopes of repeating like he did last year, he dominated it in his familiar No. 2 Penske Racing Dodge Charger, leading 234 of 330 laps. It was the kind of beat-down drivers rarely get to administer on the competition, and Busch clearly relished the victory.

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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