Atlanta Motor Speedway has been repaved, reconfigured and, therefore, reset. The 1.54-mile track located in Hampton, Georgia, offers a clean slate for Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 (3 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) despite having already hosted 115 NASCAR Cup Series races prior this year. Old stats may be irrelevant but can be intertwined into current ones to be made relevant again.
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Here are five fast facts before the weekend activities:
1. The last nine Atlanta races were won by Chevrolet or Ford.
Chevrolet is responsible for four of the last nine victories at Atlanta. Ford filled out the other five spots. That means Toyota’s last win there was in 2013. On a similar note, it has been nine races since Toyota won in the Cup Series – Talladega Superspeedway in 2021 (Bubba Wallace). This season alone, Toyota has posted only three top-five finishes in the four completed events: Wallace (second, Daytona International Speedway), Kyle Busch (fourth, Las Vegas Motor Speedway) and Kurt Busch (fifth, Phoenix Raceway).
2. Chase Elliott is winless in last 20 races.
The No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet’s last Victory Lane visit came on July 4, 2021 at Road America. It was his second win of the season, marking his lowest total in four seasons with a win. Since then, the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champion has tallied six top-five results, including three runner-up finishes – none of which have happened in 2022. In fact, Elliott’s best run so far was ninth at Las Vegas two weeks ago. He led 50 laps last weekend at Phoenix but wound up 11th. Meanwhile, two of his teammates – Larson and Bowman – have already won this year.
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3. Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin are the only active drivers with average finishes that rank within the top 10 on both superspeedway and 1.5-mile tracks.
How the racing will play out at Atlanta is still a bit of a mystery. The track remained 1.54 miles in length, but the new banking – 28 degrees rather than 24 – is higher than any other intermediate circuit. Because of that, NASCAR decided the superspeedway rules configuration (510 horsepower, seven-inch spoiler) will be used rather than the base package. So, it’s a low-key mix of the two track types.
4. For the season, four different drivers have won a pole, won Stage 1, won Stage 2, won a race and led the most laps.
Only four drivers have also finished in the top 20 in all four races: Ty Dillon, Aric Almirola and the Busch brothers. And the final green-flag stretch in all four races also happened to be four laps or less. The number four seems to be the theme of 2022 so far.
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5. Drivers under the age of 30 have won the last 10 races.
I'd make a Next Gen-eration joke here, but this trend started prior to the Next Gen car’s implementation. Since Wallace won at Talladega in October of 2021 – aka last season into the current – every victor has been under 30 years old. That 10-race streak is the longest in NASCAR history at the Cup Series level. Granted, there have only been five different winners during that span thanks to repeats.