NASCAR: Looking back at the last five Atlanta races

The NASCAR Cup Series returns to Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday. What do the last five races at the track tell us about this year’s edition?

On Sunday, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series heads to Atlanta Motor Speedway, a track that has hosted races at NASCAR’s highest level since 1960, when Fireball Roberts won the first race at the track.

Until the end of the 2010 season, the track hosted a pair of races each year. The current race, the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500, was originally the track’s autumn race, a race that served as the season finale for a number of years. Maybe you remember hearing so many times that Richard Petty’s last race and Jeff Gordon’s first race came in the same event? That event was at AMS.

Of course, a race from 1992 doesn’t tell us much about what we should expect on Sunday. What can give us insight is to look at recent results at the track and see how current drivers performed.

It’s important to note that this is the final Atlanta race before the track is repaved for the first time since 1997, when the track was given its current configuration, which means that this race might be not be very instructive in terms of how we extrapolate these results to make picks next year.

Alright, let’s take a look at the last five Atlanta races!

2013

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. sat on the pole for this one, the first one for the then-rookie. Stenhouse didn’t keep that up, though, as he pretty quickly dropped through the field. In the end, it was Kyle Busch coming away with the victory. Other notable finishes: Joey Logano (second), Martin Truex Jr. (third), and Kurt Busch (fourth). Brad Keselowski and Clint Bowyer both led for extended stretches, but they both had their days end due to engine trouble.

2014

Another Atlanta race and another tough one for Brad Keselowski, who started second but finished 39th after a crash. Kasey Kahne led 25 laps on his way to victory lane, with Carl Edwards finishing second. Kevin Harvick led a race-high 195 laps, but pit issues and a wreck led to him finishing 19th. Denny Hamlin finished third and Kyle Larson finished eighth.

2015

Jimmie Johnson won this one. Harvick finished second. Joey Logano, the polesitter, finished fourth. There’s no DNF for Brad Keselowski this year, but he finished just ninth. Denny Hamlin led 14 laps, but a wreck led to a finish of 38th.

2016

Jimmie Johnson won his second straight Atlanta race. After a relatively caution-free afternoon, this happened in overtime.

Kevin Harvick again led the most laps, but he finished sixth. Kurt Busch led 62 laps and finished fourth.

2017

Kevin Harvick was dominant early in the race, but a pit road speeding penalty ended his chance at the win. Instead, it was Brad Keselowski pulling off the victory, his first at Atlanta and the first for Team Penske since Kurt Busch won Atlanta’s fall race in 2010.