Kyle Busch a repeat victor in Atlanta in Xfinity race

He drives for Hendrick Motorsports – enough said – and crew chief Alan Gustafson has 20 career victories with drivers such as Kyle Busch, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon. It was his first win at the track in nine tries. “Gosh darn it, it feels good”. But he eventually found himself back in the top 10 in the final 100 laps, and then passed Kyle Larson in the final 10 laps for the win.

Trucks: Christopher Bell held off Matt Crafton on a restart with two laps to go and completed a dominating win in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. “We’ve looked at the track a lot over the years, and we feel we’ve gotten about three more years out of the life of the track right now”. These races aren’t easy. Those are the kinds of things that happen in these races and if anything, is just another lesson on why if there isn’t a lot of hope, you still can’t give up. I know I don’t.

Harvick absolutely dominated the race, starting from the pole and leading almost every lap until a pit-road speeding penalty with 13 laps to go took him from the lead to 35th as the last vehicle on the lead lap. He wound up ninth. I know there’s a certain time where you have to do it, or it’s going to fall apart, but like MI and some of those places, man, they’ve been tough since they paved them.

“That part is hard for me to swallow”. To see the cars sliding around and drivers having to play with the steering wheel to get the vehicle where it was supposed to go was a good thing. “We pick on them and tell them don’t do it and all these other things, but at some point, you have to trust them to know their business and know their business is racetracks”.

Harvick won the first two stages under NASCAR’s new race format and led a staggering 293 out of 325 laps. Elliott came close to winning the first two races of the season.

Harvick clearly had the fastest vehicle all weekend, starting from the pole and easily taking the first two 85-lap stages. He finished second in the other stage. The team had to pit out of sequence twice during the race. Hamlin’s second stop was for a vibration, and after pitting, he reported to his team that he thought he had a broken track-bar mount. Harvick’s penalty? Restarting the race at the end of the longest line.

The first happened shortly after the start of the second stage, which by that point Keselowski established he had the second-best vehicle to Harvick, when a flat right-front tire necessitated an unscheduled green-flag pit stop dropping him a lap behind.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. made multiple stops, but not by choice.

As for the speeding penalties, in a system that measures speed from point to point, there were shorter pit road segments with timing lines at AMS than in the past.

No state is more notorious for its speed traps than Georgia, and that included the Atlanta Motor Speedway Sunday where there’s no speed limits – except on pit road.

Atlanta Motor Speedway provided a much-welcomed change in scenery, especially because it’s about 90 minutes south of his home in Dawsonville, Ga. Several drivers had difficulty getting through pre-qualifying inspection Friday. He has never competed in a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas but he started second and finished third in the Xfinity Series race in 2016. Busch won the Xfinity race, but his vehicle failed post-race inspection.

This weekend represents a final chance for drivers to make history at the Hampton track before the surface is updated. But a speeding penalty compounded with tire issues took him out of contention early at the 1.5-mile track on Sunday. After years of RFR carrying Ford, the manufacturer finally now has two championship caliber teams with SHR and Team Penske. The Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500th was Hamlin’s 400th career Cup race.