Now that Speedweeks is in the rear-view mirror and Tyler Reddick completed a last-ditch move to capture his first Daytona 500 victory, the NASCAR Cup Series will visit EchoPark Speedway for Sunday’s Autotrader 400 in Hampton, Ga.
No track on the NASCAR schedule has changed as much as the venue formerly known as Atlanta Motor Speedway and originally as Atlanta International Raceway, which had a complete facelift in late 2021. Changes include a new configuration and repaving.
The increased banking and narrower racing surface have produced little margin for error, while drivers who step out of line and create three-wide racing can quickly discover the potential for peril.
Last February’s race was a doozy, which is about the norm just south of Atlanta these days.
Kyle Larson led Austin Cindric and William Byron with three laps left. Yet Larson’s No. 5 Chevrolet pinched Cindric’s No. 2 Ford into the wall to create a wreck between the blue oval and Byron’s No. 24 Chevy.
In overtime, Christopher Bell got a shove from Carson Hocevar just before the Wood Brothers’ No. 21 Ford of Josh Berry wrecked to give Bell the win under caution.
Bell’s 2025 Atlanta victory was a springboard: He won the following week at Circuit of the Americas in Austin and then again in Phoenix, which drivers enjoy because if they can win there in March, it’s a good sign for the championship weekend.
However, it’s the new format — the old Chase scenario — that has Bell excited about this season when a champion will be crowned on his whole body of work rather than a slew of strong finishes and one great one in the season finale. At Daytona, Bell wrecked with teammate Denny Hamlin late in the race and finished 35th.
At the Daytona 500 Media Day, Bell was asked if the revised title determining system is better for him than the recent one.
“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but it sure seems like it,” said Bell, a 13-time winner who averaged three victories a campaign from 2022 to last season. “It’s been a love/hate relationship with the way the seasons have turned out. From 2022 on, we finished top five in the points each of the last four seasons, which has been great. … Hopefully, the new format changes will suit our team a little bit better.”
Bell won three of the first four races in 2025 but took the checkers just once more — the Bristol Night Race in a cutoff event to advance to the Round of 12 as Joe Gibbs Racing swept the Round of 16’s three events.
“One thing that makes me optimistic about it and excited about it is that it weights all the races more equally,” the 31-year-old from Oklahoma said. “Thinking about the races at the beginning of the (2025) season that may not have had much importance for the playoff format we had in the past.
“Now it’s going to matter more than ever.”
That’s NASCAR’s plan, at least.
