Jimmie Johnson won the Folds of Honor 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday.
It was his second straight win at the track, and his 76th career victory, tying him with Dale Earnhardt for seventh on the all-time wins list.
Earnhardt Jr, Kyle and Kurt Busch, and Carl Edwards rounded out the top five.
‘Mr Six Time’ was rarely seen outside of the top ten, but early on didn’t seem to have the car possible to beat favourites Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr, who led most of the race.
At the end of the day, the race came down to a gutsy call from arguably the best crew chief in NASCAR, Chad Knaus, which put Jimmie 16 seconds ahead of Harvick.
The call resulted in Johnson short-pitting the rest of the field and coming in early, which threw everyone off, especially Harvick. Johnson took the lead while Harvick was on pit road after a mistake from the four crew that ended in a 15.2-second pit stop.
As soon as Harvick hit the track it was noticeable that Jimmie’s tires were wearing and Harvick quickly began to track down the leader, but with about 20 laps remaining the four car ran into some lapped traffic and couldn’t gain any more time.
With four laps to go, Ryan Newman – who had ran in the top five early in the day – spun across the front stretch, bringing out the second caution of the day.
After taking tires, Johnson got off pit road first to maintain his lead and drive on to the win. Harvick restarted next to him on the front row, but dropped back to sixth by the finish.
Matt Kenseth also dominated the early portion of Daytona, but his bad luck continued into Atlanta as well. Kenseth’s No.20 of Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team was assessed a penalty for improper fuelling, because the gas man laid a wrench on the deck lid of the car while the gas can was engaged.
To make matters worse, after Kenseth was black-flagged for the penalty, his crew – preoccupied with arguing its case to a NASCAR official – failed to tell Kenseth to pit before NASCAR stopped scoring him. As a result, Kenseth went one lap down, running a lap without being scored, and then another lap when he finally served the penalty.
This weekend marked Chase Elliott’s first Sprint Cup race at his home track, and Atlanta Motor Speedway brought him a bit of success. Chase brought home an eighth-place finish in the No.24 Napa Auto Parts Chevrolet, which registers as his first of what is expected to be many top tens.
The exciting racing was a product of the debut of NASCAR’s new low-downforce package, which received great reviews from the drivers. Dale Jr was especially ecstatic in his post-race interviews, and continued praising NASCAR and their efforts to make the racing better on Twitter in the hours after the checkered flag was waved.
The racing on Sunday was more interesting and further great races are expected from the new rules.
Next week, NASCAR begins their west coast swing, taking a trip to Las Vegas Motor Speedway – another 1.5-mile track. Last year Kevin Harvick took home the hardware after a dominant effort, so expect the mile-and-a-half experts to be the early favourites.
Hopefully the second installment of the low-downforce package will be as good as the first, and we see as great a race as this week.
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