HAMPTON, Ga. — The NASCAR Cup Series, Xfinity Series, and CRAFTSMAN Truck Series return to Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend for a full slate of high-speed racing. The reconfigured 1.54-mile track, which has produced some of the most dramatic finishes in recent seasons, will once again challenge drivers in all three national series.
The Ambetter Health 400, set for Sunday at 3 p.m. ET, serves as the main event of the weekend, with FOX providing television coverage and PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio handling the broadcast. The 260-lap race will be the seventh Cup Series event on Atlanta’s new configuration, where pack racing and late-race drama have become the norm.
Among the drivers competing Sunday, eight have previously won a Cup race at Atlanta, including Joey Logano, William Byron, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, Daniel Suárez, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, and Denny Hamlin. Logano and Byron have each won multiple times on the new layout, while Suárez claimed victory last year by leading only nine laps. The trend of late-race passes has defined recent races at Atlanta, with the winning move coming in the final two laps in four of the last five events.
Michael McDowell, who secured both poles at Atlanta last season with Front Row Motorsports, will compete with Spire Motorsports this year. Other former pole winners in the field include Logano, Busch, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Hamlin. Meanwhile, Ford enters the weekend with a streak of eight consecutive stage wins at the track, while Toyota has not won in Atlanta since Kyle Busch took the checkered flag in 2013.
Sunday’s race will also mark the end of an era, as Martin Truex Jr.’s consecutive start streak will conclude at 685 races, the sixth-longest in Cup Series history. Logano now takes over as the active leader with 578 consecutive starts.
The Xfinity Series will take center stage on Saturday at 5 p.m. ET, with the Bennett Transportation and Logistics 250 airing on The CW. The 163-lap event will feature a deep field led by Georgia native Austin Hill, who has won four of the last five Xfinity races at Atlanta. Hill has finished first or second in five of his six starts at the track and could tie Kevin Harvick for the most career Xfinity wins at Atlanta with another victory this weekend.
Jesse Love, Hill’s teammate at Richard Childress Racing, has also shown speed on drafting-style tracks. Love has led 300 laps in just seven starts, the most ever through that span, while Hill ranks second with 208. Richard Childress Racing has dominated qualifying on superspeedways, winning six of the last seven poles on drafting tracks, including both Atlanta races last season.
Three of the six Xfinity races on Atlanta’s new configuration have ended in overtime, including last year’s event, when Love led 157 laps but ran out of fuel on a late restart. Hill capitalized on the misfortune, leading only the final two laps to take the win.
With Love winning at Daytona to open the season, Richard Childress Racing is now two wins away from becoming the third team in Xfinity Series history to reach 100 victories, joining Joe Gibbs Racing and RFK Racing.
The NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series will kick off Saturday’s doubleheader with the Fr8 Racing 208 at 1:30 p.m. ET on FS1. The 135-lap race will feature the return of Kyle Busch, who will make the first of his five scheduled Truck Series starts in 2025. Busch, the all-time wins leader in the series with 66 victories, has won seven times at Atlanta, including last year’s race.
Corey Heim, a Georgia native and the most recent Truck Series winner at Daytona, looks to continue his momentum at his home track. Heim became the youngest driver to reach 12 career Truck wins at just 22 years old. A win at Atlanta would make him the fourth driver to sweep the first two races of a season in series history, joining Ben Rhodes, Johnny Sauter, and Mark Martin.
Atlanta’s reconfiguration has produced unpredictable Truck Series races, with at least 17 lead changes occurring in each of the last three events. The track has also seen different winners in each of those races, with Heim, Christian Eckes, and Busch taking victories since the redesign.
The history of Atlanta Motor Speedway stretches back to 1960, when Fireball Roberts won the inaugural Cup Series race after construction delays pushed the event back from its originally scheduled date in 1959. Over the decades, the track has played host to numerous memorable moments, including Kevin Harvick’s emotional first Cup win in 2001, Carl Edwards’ dramatic victory in 2005, and the recent surge of photo finishes on the repaved layout.
Beyond racing, Atlanta Motor Speedway has been featured in films such as Smokey and the Bandit II and Stroker Ace and has served as a hurricane evacuation site multiple times.
The weekend will feature several pre-race festivities, including OutKast rapper Big Boi serving as the honorary pace car driver and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons giving the command to start engines. Atlanta Motor Speedway will also host a pre-race dance competition featuring Funkanometry, a hip-hop duo known for their performances on America’s Got Talent.
NASCAR fans can follow the action beginning Friday with Truck Series qualifying on FS1 at 3 p.m. ET, followed by Xfinity Series qualifying on the CW app at 5 p.m. ET. Cup Series qualifying will take place Saturday at 11 a.m. ET on Amazon Prime. The Truck Series race will begin at 1:30 p.m. ET, with the Xfinity Series race following at 5 p.m. ET. Sunday’s Cup Series event will begin at 3 p.m. ET, with coverage on FOX.
With competitive racing expected in all three series, Atlanta Motor Speedway is set to deliver another thrilling weekend of superspeedway-style action.
