New-Look Atlanta NASCAR Recap

Story posted March 22, 2022 in CommRadio, Sports by Ethan Ellis

It was a wild weekend in Atlanta that saw a repaved Atlanta Motor Speedway put on a great show for fans.

This was the first time that the Cup Series was able to test out Atlanta’s new surface after it was repaved for the first time in decades and completely revamped. The banking in the corners was the biggest change as it went from 24 degrees to 28 degrees; a change that effectively made it a race commonly seen at Daytona or Talladega.

Chase Briscoe, fresh off his Cup win last weekend at Phoenix, started on pole and led the first handful of laps in the race. Right away, it became obvious that this race would heavily rely on drafting and forming long lines of cars, as seen at Daytona or Talladega. The lead changed hands several times between drivers such as Briscoe, Kyle Busch and Ryan Blaney until the first caution of the day flew for Noah Gragson, who lost control and took a hard hit into the turn one wall.

The rest of the stage was somewhat calm with drivers like Ross Chastain and William Byron trading the lead. This all went out the window, however, with a few laps left in Stage One when Chastain had a tire go down while at the front of the field to bring out the caution.

As every racing fan knows, cautions breed cautions and this was certainly the case here.

Shortly after the race restarted to end Stage One, Briscoe, Kyle Busch, Austin Dillon and Ty Dillon all got collected in a crash on the front stretch that happened due to a bad push from Busch to Austin Dillion. The crash meant that Stage One would end under caution and William Byron was given the stage win.

The first part of Stage Two went over relatively smoothly as the lead was once again traded between several drivers including Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch, Joey Logano and Tyler Reddick.

The smooth flow to the stage was rudely interrupted in the form of another tire issue, this time with Reddick. Reddick lost a tire while running near the front of the field which involved around 11 cars including Reddick. This somewhat set the tone for the rest of the stage as there were two more multi-car accidents caused by a tire failure and a bad push.

Blaney won the stage that once again ended under caution.

The intensity of the race was definitely taken down a notch in the first half of the last stage as there was only one caution (for debris) in the first part of it. During this time, Elliott and Byron were the two most dominant cars and continued to trade the lead. Byron, however, began to emerge as the more dominant of the two and took over and led for most of the rest of the race.

Byron was able to survive two late-race cautions and a vicious last lap crash to win his first race of the season.

For those who didn’t watch the race and are still wondering “Should this track be considered a track on par with Talladega or Daytona?” - it definitely should be. The stats from the race alone virtually mirror stats you’d expect to see at another restrictor plate track. The race had 46 lead changes and over half the field led a lap (20 drivers), not to mention the sheer amount of multi-car wrecks.

Atlanta is definitely a whole new track and it might be for the better. Restrictor plate tracks have commonly been some of the most popular tracks on the NASCAR circuit and another was effectively added to the schedule this past weekend.

 

Ethan Ellis is a freshman majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email him at ece5133@psu.edu.