Labor Day Classic 500 Race Preview

Atlanta Motor Speedway -- 09/5/2010

Author: Jed Henson

Published: Wednesday Sep 1 2010 11:13am

Read all of Jed Henson's articles here


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This week the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series returns to Georgia for a run at Atlanta Motor Speedway (AMS). AMS is a 1.5-mile, D-shaped track with 24 degrees of progressive banking. These specs make AMS very similar to the tracks in Charlotte, Texas and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Las Vegas. We already have decent practice, qualifying and race data from all three of these tracks this year, plus the data from the Atlanta race in March, and I think that allows us to get a very good handle on who should run well on Sunday.

Handicapping Atlanta II
I crunched the 2010 Las Vegas, Atlanta, Texas and Charlotte data to produce initial driver rankings, and then merged those results with the rankings produced by running just the Atlanta data (thereby tilting the results toward the Atlanta numbers). I came up with a top 10 I feel pretty good about:

1. Kasey Kahne
2. Kurt Busch
3. Jimmie Johnson
4. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
5. Ryan Newman
6. Kyle Busch
7. Jeff Gordon
8. Matt Kenseth
9. Mark Martin
10. Juan Pablo Montoya

I'm a little surprised to see Kahne #1 (I think it's the first time I've rated him on top), but this year's numbers from these banked cookie-cutter tracks say he should run very well this week.

It's no surprise, however, that all four Hendrick Motorsports cars cracked the top 10 this week. Johnson and Gordon have torn up the banked cookies this year, and while not as spectacular, Dale Jr. and Martin have run well, too.

Weather.com says AMS will get good, consistent weather Friday and Saturday, so we should get good practice and qualifying data to review prior to Sunday's race.

Stay tuned for my update following the prelims.

Jed Henson publishes the blog NASCARPredict.com. He participates in the Nascapper forums and Free NASCAR Picks Monitor under the name Tucker19.

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GripexYa im not sure how strong Harvick is gunna be, hasnt really shown well on the 1.5`ers. Average finish is a horrible way to grade a drivers results.
Paperboy1971Obviously tommy123 is a fantasy player and not a handicapper.
tommy 123with harvicks #7 average how can you omit him