Welcome to Random Recaps, our new weekly feature at From The Marbles. In this space, we'll recap a race from the past at the track the where Sprint Cup Series is racing next.
Here's how it works. Thanks to the box score data at Racing Reference, we know how many Sprint Cup Series races have been held at a track. At Atlanta Motor Speedway, site of Sunday's Cup race, there have been 107 cup races.
With that knowledge in hand, we head over to Random.org and set our minimum to 1 and our maximum to 107. Whatever number the generator gives us is the race we'll recap. The generator gave us 18, so we'll start with the 18th race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Date: March 31, 1968
The 1968 Atlanta 500 was dominated and won by Cale Yarborough in the 60 Minute Cleaners 1968 Mercury for the Wood Brothers. Yarborough led 172 of the race's 334 laps and won nearly $21,000 for his efforts.
He beat LeeRoy Yarbrough to the line by nine seconds in the race that was marred by 11 cautions and took nearly four hours to complete. The Yarborough/Yarbrough brothers were the only two cars on the lead lap. Donnie Allison finished third, one lap down. Charlie Glotzbach and Darel Dieringer rounded out the top five two laps down.
(Editor's note: Do you really want to go back to the good old days of NASCAR?)
Yarborough led the last 29 laps of the race en route to the fifth victory of his career and his second of the 1968 season. He won the Daytona 500 in February. He also beat Yarbrough to the line in the 500.
Bobby Allison led 42 laps but finished 19th because of crash. He completed 291 laps.
44 cars raced at Atlanta and only 19 were running at the finish. Wendell Scott was 25th after completing 129 laps because of an oil pressure problem. Three drivers, Red Farmer, Bill Seifert and Henley Gray, did not finish the race with a listed reason of "quit."
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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