Sunny skies, cool temperatures and the lovely-voiced Ed Roland kick things off at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Nice to see talent singing the national anthem for a change. Ed and his current band did a very nice job, as I would expect. The boy’s talented.
Have to say I agree with DW. The 5 minute clock is just too short since they’re including pit in and pit out time. Two stops means they actually only have three minutes to work on the cars and while I believe the crews are talented – they aren’t Hogwarts students. They need a little more time, or the time should start when the car stops in the pit box. Five minutes seems incredibly short, either way, but beginning the clock at the time they leave the racing groove seriously asks a bit much of the teams. I’m sure NASCAR doesn’t want to be held responsible for specifically telling individual teams that they can’t continue, but the bar seems a bit high at the moment for the objective measure of whether a team can continue.
The stages for Atlanta are 85-85-85.
Kevin Harvick leads the field to the green flag.
The drivers apparently have a petition against repaving the track. The racing is apparently fun for them with the track as-is. As a fan the racing has been crappy at the track for a while, though I don’t know if a repave will help it from the paying fan’s point of view. Jeff Gordon has mentioned how different his point of view is sitting in the booth. While I believe many drivers are racing fans, I also know that it’s a very different thing to be a fan participating in a sport versus a fan spectating only. Each requires something different from the sport for their individual enjoyment.
Green flag pit stops on lap 34.
Clouds are over the track now dropping the temperature. The first Atlanta race we attended was a cool, breezy day and when under cloud cover it was downright chilly – too cool for these Georgia girls.
Dale Jr is coming into the pits on lap 70 of 325 with damage on the right rear. Jr said the tire was coming apart.
Harvick is steadily lapping the field. So far its been another boring Atlanta race.
Unsurprisingly Harvick won the stage, though he managed to refrain from putting Danica – his teammate – down a lap before the end of the stage. The 10 was the next car in front of him available for lapping, and he just didn’t do it. Yawn.
Looks like the restart is on lap 94 of 325.
Brad ‘It’ Keselowski is making an unscheduled pit stop on lap 118.
Looks like early green flag pit stops are underway on lap 120.
Joey ‘Squinty Douchey’ Logano got popped for speeding on pit road and will have to serve a pass-through penalty.
The King will be 80 this July. My Mom will be 85 this July.
It and Paul Wolf are trying to gimmick their way to the checkered flag by short-pitting on lap 145. Sigh.
Denny Hamlin pitted on lap 160 for a tire going down.
Wow with four to go in stage two the PRN announcer said there’s some really good points racing happening now. He said it’s what NASCAR was hoping for. Well it isn’t making the race any more interesting, so if NASCAR got what it was hoping for good for them. I’ve been hoping for better racing and that’s definitely not what I’m getting.
Stage two is finally over. Again unsurprisingly KHarv won the stage.
Wow. This is seems more boring than usual. I think its due to the lag between stages. At least with the typical boring Atlanta race you can hope for it to get to the end soon – which is typically when anything happens – if its going to happen – in the race. Now it feels as though the race drags as the stage-end-stage-start period seems long. I find that weird.
Denny Hamlin thinks he has a track bar mount issue and has taken his car to the garage on lap 173 of 325.
Since Denny’s issue is a mechanical issue and not crash damage he will be able to come back onto the track after repairs.
They’re restarting on lap 178 of 325.
Denny is now out of the car and says if there’s no wreck in the next 10 minutes or so they’ll probably pack it up. He’s saying it was a mechanical failure.
Jr says he has a loose wheel. The team said all of the wheels are tight. He stayed out a while and said I’m bringing to you and did so on lap 197 of 325.
I’m in agreement with Wendy Venturini that the trophy at the end of the stage is not good. She said it makes it seem like a participation award. The stage trophy is really lame – then again the stage thing overall is lame to me. I understand the attempt to get the drivers to race the entire race, but I think the stages need to be shorter for the Cup series and there needs to be a bigger payoff for winning and placing in a stage to really encourage harder racing.
The left rear tire on Jr’s car was loose.
Jimmie got his second speeding penalty of the day as they tried short-pitting to get something done.
There are 13 cars on the lead lap. That’s not a race, its a parade.
At this point almost everybody that’s come in for a pit stop seems to have been popped for speeding including Jimmie, Martin Truex Jr and AJ Allmendinger.
There have been 9 pit road speeding penalties in the race. Chase Elliott also got popped.
When PRN gets back from commercial break they pause for station identification. They take a lot of breaks it seems.
Chase managed to stay on the lead lap as he did his pass-through. He’s in 12th the last car on the lead lap. Pathetic.
Apparently Marcus Smith is hedging his bets about whether Atlanta is actually going to be repaved since the drivers have been tweeting asking them to not repave.
Caution is out on lap 240 of 325 for debris.
27 cars one or more laps down. What a non-race.
Jr says he’s losing a wheel again on lap 256 of 325.
Caution with 262 to go for Gray Gaulding’s car laying down a lot of smoke.
‘It’ says he has loose lugnuts on the left rear after a pit stop that got him the lead over KHarv. He took the car back down to the pits under caution leaving KHarv to start the race at the bottom as he prefers.
There will be 56 laps to go on the restart.
Bowyer brings out the caution out on lap 47 as he hit the wall.
Now under these circumstances in which Bowyer had an issue and knew he had an issue, but tried to ride it out ending up in the wall and bringing out the caution I can see NASCAR putting him on a 5 minute clock. I could even see that he was having issues and figured he was trying to ride it out. That’s where I’m okay with the five minute clock. I’ve seen ‘It’ do that too often and frequently end up wreaking havoc on other cars. In cases like that NASCAR should probably do something because of the damage it usually causes innocent folk who get caught up.
Restarting with 42 to go.
With 37 to go Ryan Newman is going to the garage with power issues.
There have been 12 speeding penalties today.
With 17 to go Austin Dillon is having power issues – same problem as his teammate Ryan Newman.
Caution is out with 16 to go for Frankenstein who is creeping toward pit lane. The truck has arrived to give him a push.
KHarv got a speeding penalty.
What a crappy, gimmicky race.
Jimmie got penalized again for pitting as the wave-around car. Chadley seems to be pleading his case with the NASCAR officials.
‘It’ wins.
Boy am I glad I wasn’t there for that debacle.
KHarv led 293 of 325 laps.
Congrats to Kasey Kahne on a fourth place finish and Chase Elliott on a fifth place finish.
NASCAR News: