Welcome to Atlanta, where the players play (to take a line from Ludacris). Well the drivers drive at least. Atlanta Motor Speedway is a driver’s track. What does that mean? It favors the drivers that can get the most out of their car over the long run and can find the fastest groove at any point in the race.

Atlanta is a 1.5-mile track, the most common track distance on the senior circuit, but it is a track unlike any other. While the banking is 24 degrees, similar to many of the tracks of this distance and it’s a quad-oval (meaning there are two turns on the front stretch), like Charlotte is. The surface makes the difference. It is the last track on the schedule to get a repave, but that’s just the way the drivers like it. In fact track ownership was planning to repave it after last year’s race but the drivers protested the move and got their way. The rough, gray, cracked-and-repaired surface is slick and unkind to tires all across the wide racing surface. There are three or four lanes on the track early in the race but as the race continues cars are relegated to either the top or bottom groove to make speed around the oval.

The other issue with Atlanta is pit lane. It’s widely considered the toughest pit road to get onto on the schedule. Why? It’s position, it’s speed, it’s timing sections, the banking transition, you take your pick. Drivers routinely do 190 mph entering Turn 3 and then have to slow down to 45 (plus 4.99 mph) at the entrance of the pits by the exit of Turn 4. Last year NASCAR also added seven more timing sections to the pits to bring it to 16 sections in total. In 2016, with just nine sections, there was one pit speeding penalty assessed, last year there were 13. Add in the fact that every pit stop is a four-tire stop and the new pit rules slowing pit stops to a crawl, compared to last year, and you have a recipe for even more speeding penalties.

Earlier Saturday I published the combined practice notes for both practice sessions. The most important thing to pay attention to is the 10-lap averages and when they happened. Those drivers that had the best 10-lap averages later in their runs are the ones you want to look at more since they can save their tires the best. Goodyear is expecting a 3-4 second fall off in lap times during the course of green lap runs (40-50 laps in length), which is a lot to lose in tire performance.

Stacks

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