NASCAR’s second race of the season, the Quik Trip 500, takes place on Sunday at the Atlanta Motor Speedway.
After Austin Dillon won a thrilling race in Daytona NASCAR moves on to Georgia where the weather could be a problem and cause a delay.
Atlanta Motor Speedways is an intermediate 1.54-mile quad-oval track that happens to be one of the fastest on the NASCAR circuit.
Austin Dillon will have a tough time winning back-to-back races as the last man that did that in NASCAR was Matt Kenseth back in 2009.
Instead, three drivers that could contend in Atlanta are Martin Truex Jr., Jimmy Johnson, and Kurt Busch. These are three drivers that can still race at a high level and have previously had success at this track.
Martin Truex Jr.: who had a pretty good showing last week in Daytona although he finished 18th. He raced solidly for most of the race and was able to get through without wrecking that is something worth considering. Truex must be one of the favorites for this race as he’s won seven of the last 11 races in NASCAR of 1.5 miles. He’s been on fire in his last 11 races at intermediate 1.5-mile tracks where his average finishing position was 2.5.
Jimmy Johnson: he hasn’t raced well and had a tough year last year and has struggled in his last 10 races, but he has won three times in Atlanta, the last two coming in 2015 and 2016. He does really well here, and it would be a very good place to get him going this season after his wreck last week at Daytona.
Kurt Busch: he’s won three times at Atlanta in his career and finished in the top-10 12 times and in the last three races at this track he’s finished 4th in 2016 and in the top-10 the last two years. Busch is actually not racing poorly lately, if not for the wreck last week Busch could have finished in the top-three at Daytona and he can be expected to be involved in this race once again.
