The Essentials
Race: Pep Boys 500Time: Sunday 7:47pm/EDT
TV/Radio: ESPN, PRN Radio
Twitter: Updates @ FanHouseRacing
Forecast: High 60s, Mostly Cloudy
Distance: 325 laps (500.5 miles)
Pole Winner: Martin Truex Jr.
2008 Winner: Carl Edwards
The Storylines
And judging by the optimism of AMS track president Ed Clark, the expected attendance is working in his favor.
Clark said earlier this week that the track ticket office set a single-day record for ticket sales on Monday with 2,400 seats being ordered. It was a number that will cost Clark in the coming weeks after he made a bet with the ticket office staff that he'd make lunch if they could sell 1,700 tickets in a day.
Lemon pepper chicken it is.
AMS has been on the rumored NASCAR chopping block thanks to a recent purchase of Kentucky Speedway by the AMS parent company Speedway Motorsports Inc., and SMI head Bruton Smith's desire to have to two races at a track in Las Vegas.
Kurt Busch, the
Such a fast piece, though, didn't leave driver Kurt Busch wanting to get too deep in offering advice to Erik Darnell for this weekend. Darnell is making his first career Sprint Cup start for Yates Racing.
"My first race was at Dover many years ago it seems like," said Busch. "When they dropped the green flag, everybody was going so fast I didn't know what to do. I just backed out of the gas, went to 43rd and I started over. I ended up finishing 18th that day, but I couldn't believe the pace that everybody wanted to run every lap. That's some of the advice I'd give him."
It's kind of hard to believe that Busch refers to his first race in a sense of "many years ago", eh?
Bobby Labonte was unseated by Darnell for Atlanta and the next seven races thanks to sponsorship issues on that Yates Racing No. 96 car.
The problem was simple: Labonte didn't have sponsorship, but Darnell did. The timing, though, more complex.
Atlanta might as well be Labonte's middle name, as the Texan has six career wins at the 1.54-mile speedway. He'd be on just about anybody's fantasy race team for this weekend.
Fortunately, Labonte managed to find a deal with TRG Motorsports to drive the No. 71 this weekend and the next six races. The deal helped preserve a streak of 569 consecutive Cup races that Bobby has been a part of, just one shy of Jeff Gordon's streak of 570 straight races.
Sunday night's race has been billed as the first Sprint Cup night race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, but I don't think I can let that slide. It's not the first night race, but rather, the first scheduled night race.
In November of 1998, the final race of the NASCAR season was scheduled for a Sunday afternoon at AMS, but rain had other plans. The race finally got underway in earnest around 9pm/ET time, meaning the newly-installed lights had truly paid off.
Jeff Gordon led 113 of the 221 laps completed (race was shortened due to time) to score his 13th win of 1998 en route to dominating the championship by some 364 points. The 13 wins is still a modern era record (tied with Richard Petty) and included a mid-season stretch where he won seven of nine races, four of which were won consecutively.
And you thought Kyle Busch's winning habits were bad.
Carl Edwards will be racing with a broken foot in tonight's race, as a result of a frisbee injury this week.
The injury may hurt, but competitor Jeff Gordon doesn't expect it to be a distraction for Edwards on the track.
"You would be surprised when you are in the race car, the engine is loud, there's a lot of vibration and your focus on driving the car can really eliminate a lot of pain and discomforts that are going on and take your mind off of it," said Gordon. "It truly is the perfect example of mind over matter."
It didn't seem to be a problem on Saturday night, as Edwards completed the whole Nationwide Series event and finished 7th.
The Prediction
ESPN's Ed Hinton made note of this in a column this week, and it's hard not to believe the logic. Simply, if you want to know who will prosper when the Chase starts after Richmond next week, just look at who runs well tonight.
Multiple tracks in the Chase fall at 1.5-mile venues, and the format has shown to benefit drivers who can handle those the best. In other words, it's not a surprise that Jimmie Johnson is your three-time defending Cup champ.
He also makes my prediction easy tonight.
Geoffrey Miller: Jimmie Johnson
