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This Week in Auto Racing September 3 - 5
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By Chris Symeon, Motorsports Editor
The Sports Network
Hampton, GA (Sports Network) -
After taking their final week off this season, the Sprint Cup Series resumes at Atlanta Motor Speedway, as two races remain to decide who will be in the championship Chase. The Nationwide Series also will be at Atlanta, while the Camping World Truck Series joins the IZOD IndyCar Series at Kentucky Speedway.
NASCAR
Sprint Cup Series
Emory Healthcare 500 - Atlanta Motor Speedway - Hampton, GA
Time is running out for several drivers who are attempting to qualify for the championship Chase, which begins September 19 at New Hampshire. Kevin Harvick and Jeff Gordon already have clinched a spot in this year's 12-driver field.
After winning the August 21 race at Bristol, Kyle Busch all but secured his position in the Chase. If Busch finishes 40th or better this Labor Day weekend at the fast 1.54-mile Atlanta Motor Speedway, he will qualify for the playoffs. He has been in the Chase in three of the last four years. He came up eight points short of making it in last year.
Kyle Busch has been in the Chase in three of the last four years.
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"I feel like going on to Atlanta, it's going to be a test for us to see how good we are again at the mile-and-a-half stuff," Busch said. "Then we go to Richmond, another one of the racetracks that I tend to run well at."
Busch made NASCAR history at Bristol, where he became the first driver to win all three national touring series races during the same week.
He will attempt triple duty again this week, competing in Friday's Camping World Truck race at Kentucky and then running in Saturday's Nationwide event and Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Atlanta.
Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin likely will clinch a spot in the Chase at Atlanta. Edwards will secure a spot if he finishes 21st or better, regardless of any other driver's performance, while Hamlin's ticket will be punched with a 20th-place run or higher.
Tony Stewart, Jeff Burton and Matt Kenseth have a pretty good shot of qualifying for the Chase at Atlanta.
Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch and Greg Biffle could secure a position in the playoffs this weekend. Most likely, those three drivers will do it next week at Richmond.
Biffle, currently 11th in points, is 135 points ahead of Clint Bowyer, who now holds the 12th and final spot for the Chase.
Bowyer holds a somewhat comfortable 100-point advantage over 13th-place Jamie McMurray, but anything can happen in the next two races.
"I know that it's going to be a hard-fought battle right down to Richmond," Bowyer said. "You can't count out Mark Martin, Ryan Newman and Jamie McMurray. They are still in this thing."
McMurray is only one point ahead of 14th-place Mark Martin.
"With two races left, a lot can happen, and certainly Atlanta is one of those tracks that you can really have a good car there, and you can really miss it and be three laps down," McMurray said.
Ryan Newman sits in 15th-place and trails McMurray by 18 points.
Kasey Kahne is 136 points in back of the coveted 12th spot. Kahne won last year's fall race at Atlanta. He passed Kevin Harvick for the lead after a restart with 11 laps to go, and then held off Harvick at the finish by nearly two seconds for his 11th career Sprint Cup victory. He has not won since Atlanta one year ago.
Kahne will finish the last 12 races of this season with Richard Petty Motorsports before moving over to Red Bull Racing next year and switching over to Hendrick Motorsports to take over Martin's seat in the No.5 car in 2012.
"If we don't make the Chase, hopefully we can show up to the racetrack each week and contend," Kahne said. "If we do make the Chase, we can do the same thing, contend. I feel we should have a really good shot at winning a race or two, regardless if we make it or not."
A lot of attention will be focused on Edwards and Brad Keselowski this weekend, as the two return to Atlanta after their wild on-track altercation in the closing laps of the spring race here in March.
Keselowski got his bell rung when Edwards intentionally bumped him from behind and sent his No.12 Penske Racing Dodge flying upside down into the wall along the frontstretch.
"It's a spectacular result, so I assume we'll see that a lot for a long time," Edwards said. "It's pretty amazing people give me all this credit since I knew exactly how to flip a car over at a track where a car has never flipped over like that before. It turned into the worst-case scenario, or the most dramatic scenario, far from what I expected."
Edwards was more than 150 laps behind at the time of the horrifying crash, due to a previous encounter he had with Keselowski earlier in the race. Keselowski clipped Edwards and shot him up the track before he made contact with Joey Logano and then slammed into the wall.
Both Edwards and Keselowski currently are on probation for the remainder of the year, following their most recent altercation in the July 17 Nationwide race at Gateway International Raceway near St. Louis.
Forty-seven teams are on the preliminary entry list for the Emory Healthcare 500.
Nationwide Series
Great Clips 300 - Atlanta Motor Speedway - Hampton, GA
With nine races remaining in the season, Brad Keselowski's route to his first Nationwide Series championship is pretty much becoming a walk in the park.
Keselowski finished fourth last weekend at Montreal, which was the third and final Nationwide road course event of the season. He now holds a commanding 365-point lead over Carl Edwards, who finished 20th.
However, the battle for the car owner championship remains a good one heading into Saturday's race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The No.18 Joe Gibbs Racing team, with drivers Kyle Busch and Brad Coleman, holds just a 35-point lead over Keselowski's No.22 Penske Racing team.
Busch will attempt to win his 11th Nationwide race this year, which will set a series record for most victories in a season. His record-tying 10th win of the year came at Bristol. He did not compete at Montreal. Busch also won 10 races during the 2008 season, but Sam Ard originally set the record in 1983.
The 25-year-old has yet to win in six Nationwide starts at Atlanta. He did finish second here in 2004 and '09.
Kevin Harvick won at Atlanta one year ago. He also won the Camping World Truck Series race here in March.
"Atlanta has been a really good track for us, and it seems like we have a really good base set-up, but the only difference is the tires," Harvick said. "You have that added variable in there, because you don't know how the Nationwide car is going to react. We ran good with the same stuff in the trucks, so hopefully going back, it's still a race track that works good for us and our confidence is really high."
Forty-four teams are on the preliminary entry list for the Great Clips 300.
Matt Kenseth, Kasey Kahne, Jamie McMurray and Ryan Newman are among those Sprint Cup Series regulars joining Keselowski, Edwards, Busch and Harvick in the 300-mile Nationwide race at Atlanta.
Camping World Truck Series
The Built Ford Tough 225 - Kentucky Speedway - Sparta, KY
Kyle Busch will try to continue his winning ways in NASCAR this Friday at Kentucky Speedway. Busch not only will attempt to win his fifth consecutive national touring series race, but also claim his 80th overall victory in NASCAR's three big leagues.
At Bristol, Busch became the first driver to win the Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series races during the same week. Last Friday, he claimed his fourth straight victory by taking the truck race at Chicagoland.
"For me, to carry the momentum from last week means a lot, but now we'd like to carry it on into [this] weekend going to Kentucky," Busch said. "We know that will be a tough race for us. [Ron] Hornaday [Jr.] is really strong there. I know [Mike] Skinner has been fast there before with Eric [Phillips] being his crew chief. I'm sure [Todd] Bodine will be tough to beat. It should be fun, and hopefully we can go for five in a row before we head to Atlanta."
Phillips now serves as Busch's crew chief at Kyle Busch Motorsports.
Busch has competed in just one truck race at Kentucky, with a sixth-place finish in 2008. He is the only Sprint Cup regular entered for this event.
Last year at Kentucky, Hornaday became the first repeat winner at the 1.5-mile track. He took the lead from Aric Almirola after a restart with 18 laps to go, and then held off Skinner at the finish by 0.14 seconds. Hornaday also won here in 2006.
"I'm looking forward to going back to Kentucky," Hornaday said. "We had a surprising win there last year. I had never really run too well there, even though I had one win. It had never been a track where I was very successful. Everything went our way last year, and I'm hoping for the same result this year."
After finishing second at Chicagoland, Todd Bodine widened his points lead to 236 over Almirola. Eight races remain this season.
Thirty-eight teams are on the preliminary entry list for The Built Ford Tough 225.
IZOD INDYCAR SERIES
Kentucky Indy 300 - Kentucky Speedway - Sparta, KY
Three races to go, and three title contenders remain in the show.
After winning last Saturday's race at Chicagoland, Dario Franchitti trimmed Will Power's lead from 59 points to just 23.
Franchitti claimed the lead for the first time when he opted not to take on new tires and exited the pits first during the final round of stops with 28 laps remaining. He then held off several challenges for the lead in the closing laps of a tightly contested race. Franchitti finished just 0.04 seconds ahead of Dan Wheldon for his third victory of the season.
"I think what we saw [at Chicagoland], we see how quickly these things can change, especially on these one-and-a-half-mile tracks," Franchitti said.
With three races remaining last year, Franchitti trailed Power's Team Penske teammate, Ryan Briscoe, by only four points. But Briscoe won at Chicagoland -- then the third-to-last race of season -- and padded his points lead to 25 over Franchitti and 33 ahead of Dixon.
Then Dixon moved atop the standings after winning the penultimate race in Motegi, Japan. He held a five-point lead over Franchitti and an eight-point advantage over Briscoe heading into the season-finale at Homestead, FL.
Franchitti won at Homestead and clinched his second IndyCar championship. He finished 11 points ahead of his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Dixon, while Briscoe ended the year 12 markers behind.
So anything can happen from Kentucky to Homestead.
"It's going to be interesting these last three," Franchitti added.
Power surprisingly did well at Chicagoland, but he experienced a fueling issue during a late-race pit stop. He was contending for the win until he ran out of gas with five laps remaining. Power finished one lap behind in 16th.
"That was just a mistake that we couldn't afford," Power said. "This obviously makes things tougher for the championship, but we're still in front, and we proved how competitive we can be on the ovals. We'll move on, and we will work harder [this] week at Kentucky."
The Australian driver has won five races so far this season, with all of them coming on road/street courses. The final course event of the year took place on August 22 at Sonoma, CA.
Power has finished ninth and 26th in the last two races at Kentucky, while Franchitti's best performance in five starts here is sixth, which came in 2004 and '09. Dixon won at Kentucky in 2008 and finished seventh here last year.
Kentucky will mark the 200th IndyCar race. The series' first event occurred on January 27, 1996 at Walt Disney World Speedway near Orlando, FL.
Twenty-eight drivers are on the preliminary entry list for the Kentucky Indy 300
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