NASCAR at Atlanta: How to watch, starting lineup, predictions and betting odds

NASCAR’s top series returns to Atlanta Motor Speedway this Sunday, which means Kyle Larson will have another opportunity to dominate. He led more than 80% of the laps during the last Atlanta race but didn’t lock down the win. Ryan Blaney passed Larson with fewer than 10 laps to go for the checkered flag in March.

Since then, Larson has won two more races on 1.5-mile tracks, including the Texas All-Star race, and five total events this year. He’s the favorite to win Sunday, according to BetMGM odds (+225). Kyle Busch (+750), Chase Elliott (+800) and Kevin Harvick (+900) also have the best odds on the site.

The Quaker State 400 is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on NBCSN.

Elliott won last weekend’s road course race at Road America and will start on the pole Sunday thanks to NASCAR’s performance-based qualifying metric formula. Busch is also starting in the front row, and he has three top-three finishes in the last three races. Larson will start sixth behind Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Martin Truex Jr. Blaney is starting 15th.

This will be NASCAR’s last Cup race on the track before it undergoes a repave and reprofile. Atlanta Motor Speedway announced earlier this week that the Cup Series’ oldest visited surface will soon become its newest. The track will be repaved in advance of the 2022 season. It was last repaved in 1997. Other modifications include increasing the track’s 24-degree banking to 28 degrees — the highest of any intermediate track on the current NASCAR circuit — and narrowing the surface in the turns from 55 feet to 40 feet.

“It’s all new for ’22 and this will be specifically designed for close, competitive racing,” Speedway Motorsports president Marcus Smith said in a statement.

Before the repaved track debuts in 2022 in conjunction with NASCAR’s Next Gen era, drivers are preparing for one more weekend on the slick surface in Hampton, Georgia.

NASCAR at Atlanta race predictions

Kyle Larson has had a relatively quiet last two weeks. Quiet for Larson, that is. He finished ninth followed by second at the Pocono doubleheaders, and 16th at Road America last Sunday. His team also isn’t bringing the car this weekend that he last drove at Atlanta. That car was used as a backup at Pocono when he finished second, leaving us to wonder whether it was just a particularly fast car and if the competitive advantage is lost this weekend.

Crew chief Cliff Daniels said he and Larson have had multiple conversations about late-race adjustments and preserving tires on the old surface if and when he’s in the lead. The team’s record on the 1.5-mile tracks this year is also hard to bet against. I’d stick with the No. 5 this weekend.

NASCAR race at Atlanta how to watch

▪ Race: Quaker State 400 presented by Walmart

▪ When: Sunday, July 11

▪ Time: 3:30 p.m. ET

▪ TV: NBCSN

▪ Radio: PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

▪ Distance: 400.4 miles (260 laps) with stages ending on laps 80, 160 and 260 (on a 1.54-mile track)

NASCAR at Atlanta starting lineup

This story was originally published July 10, 2021 at 7:00 PM.

Alexandra Andrejev

The Charlotte Observer

NASCAR and Charlotte FC beat reporter Alex Andrejev joined The Observer in January 2020 following an internship at The Washington Post. She is a two-time APSE award winner for her NASCAR beat coverage and National Motorsports Press Association award winner. She is the host of McClatchy’s podcast “Payback” about women’s soccer. Support my work with a digital subscription