CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) – NASCAR did not have its finest weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where the follow-up to the Daytona 500 began with the theft of a race car and a parked SUV rolling into Denny Hamlin’s motorhome.
Qualifying was a debacle for the second week in a row, rain delayed the start of Sunday’s race and Jeff Gordon once again managed to crash into a concrete wall that lacked an energy-absorbing barrier.
By the time Jimmie Johnson took the checkered flag to close a cold and wet weekend, everyone was ready to get out of Atlanta.
It was a momentum-killing weekend for NASCAR, which had staged a strong season-opener one week earlier only to fall flat at one of the more historic tracks on the circuit.
Things went awry early when a trailer carrying the Team XTREME race car for Travis Kvapil was stolen from a motel parking lot early Friday morning.