andrewgallinger.com

By: Andrew Gallinger

For the second week of the NASCAR Cup Series season, the 2024 campaign headed to Atlanta Motor Speedway for more drafting for the third year on the 1.5-mile reconfigured speedway.

The Georgia hype certainly held, as the 400 miles of racing came down to 0.003 seconds at the finish between Mexico’s Daniel Suarez, driving the 99 for Trackhouse Racing, 2023 Cup Champion Ryan Blaney, with his 12 Ford Mustang in the fight for Penske Racing & then Kyle Bush bringing up the bowtie brigade for Chevrolet with his Richard Childress Racing 8 car.

How did we get here? It’s started with calamity without the crunch on Lap 2. 16 cars were involved in a crash stretching from the middle of the front straightaway to turn 1, leading to an early caution flag and slow-down to the action. Think back to my first story one week ago on the drafting at Daytona. The three-wide racing, even packs, all cars handing poorly, depending on conditions is the same at AMS, the Georgia track being smaller naturally creates smaller packs, and the venue characteristics bring its own charm to the race. Miraculously 14 of the 16 drivers involved in this crash were able to drive away from the accident with only minimal damage, with the majority continuing on the majority of the race. That accident was just very early in the race, so many cars clustered so close together with not enough escape routes. Perhaps, the one saving grace was the continuation of the majority of those collected.

As racing resumed on Lap 11, the field started to find its rhythm. That’s until Lap 26 when Christopher Buescher got loose in Turn 4 in his RFK Racing Ford, bringing out the second yellow flag of the afternoon. Going back to what I teased about venue characteristics… what sent Buescher spinning, a lack of grip between the racetrack & his Goodyear tires. No one else was caught up as that Mustang slid down the speedway.

The caution gave the rest of the field a chance to reign in their wild horses & make adjustments. Once the green flag was back in the air, Blaney, Bush & Michael McDowell from Front Row Motorsports, all went back & forth with the lead. Then, on Lap, 54, former Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Bush & Denny Hamlin got together on the frontstretch coming off Turn 4, sending Hamlin spinning through the infield. Video replays showed Bush on the bottom coming out of the corner & Hamlin up top. It was just two guys going for the same spot. No significant damage to either vehicle from that contact.

The race would remain calm, in terms of wrecks, for the next 106 laps with strong side-by-side racing & continued passing for the lead & jockeying for multiple places throughout the field. What was supposed to be the expected end of Stage 2 green & white checkered flag in half of a lap, instead was a caution with penalized polesitter, Joey Logano sitting stuck on the backstretch after throwing a block towards the top of Turn 2 on Buescher. Buescher bounced off the outside wall, catching Logano in the right-rear, leaving the back of the Pennzoil Ford broken & done for the day. With Logano’s agony of defeat, coupled with the anger, & maybe disappointment or embarrassment of losing a front row starting spot for the race, due to altered driving gloves, the juxtaposition of having teammate Austin Cindric win Stage 2, had to at least help a smidge to ease the sting in the Penske camp.

Once the final stage got underway with less than 100 laps to go, business started to pick up & the crazy racing went from edge of your seat watching it, too, take it in & hold your breath a couple times a lap. In this final stanza of the race there were 5 cautions for 2 & 3 car incidents, one necessitating a red flag of the race for just over 11 minutes, one with 19 laps to go. The last caution came out with 5 laps to go setting up what would ultimately be the final restart. Suarez was leading, restarting in the bottom lane, Blaney was to his outside. At that point, it was a chess-match between those two on who got the better launch, but also, who had stronger help with drafting right behind. Suarez had Bush on his bumper, Blaney had JGR veteran & 2017 Cup Champion, Martin Truex, Jr. working to give him a shove. Blaney prevailed while Suarez fell back over the 4 laps, but they were still right there in a cluster. As the white flag waved on Blaney, about halfway down the backstretch, it looked like the reining series champ was going to prevail, however the energy from the runs Suarez & Bush were coming with at the very top of the track & in the middle groove, respectively, were too strong for Blaney to block. Suarez up top, Bush in the middle & Blaney down low. You could’ve put a blanket over those three cars from the entrance of turn 3 around to the finish line at the mid-point of the frontstretch. Within a couple seconds of those three crossing the line, you hear NASCAR broadcast feeds cut to series officials. The announcement that the finish was “under review” wasn’t at all shocking, given the nature of it & the fact that it was so close there’s a chance even electronic scoring needed a minute to catch up. When all was ruled official, Suarez was the winner in a fashion that likely won’t soon be forgotten.

Three cars finishing within 0.007 seconds of each other, 0.003 between the top 2 with Suarez, Blaney & Bush the Top-3 from the shocking end at AMS. Will the pay window open with more cheers & thrills or will many leave Las Vegas Motor Speedway with their chips & cars in the middle of a catastrophe? We’ll find out next week.