No, it's not a list of the cars collected in either of the surprisingly large accidents on Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. It's a list of the mean Fahrenheit temperatures of this date at the track over the last five years. And since Jimmie Johnson ran a race that offered very little reason for question, we turn our attention to this: why on earth is there a race in Atlanta on the first day of March?
All right, fine, we'll give Johnson his due: his victory in the nobly-aimed, awkwardly-named Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 is the 71st of his career. He's eighth on the all-time wins list, now only five behind Dale Earnhardt. He's one point off the Cup standings lead behind Joey Logano, and he's almost surely punched his ticket into the Chase. He started 38th thanks to Friday's qualifying debacle, and even so managed to weave right through the field and lead 92 of the race's 325 laps.
All of which means that the next time the Sprint Cup series comes around to Atlanta, Johnson could very well be the seven-time defending champion. And for the sake of the track and the fan base around it, that return should be well over a year from now.
NASCAR, its tracks, and its broadcast partners create the schedule using a mixture of fixed dates, ratings considerations, weather forecasts, and probably a bit of alchemy. With all that in mind, it's not hard to envision a scenario where Atlanta ended up with this immediate post-Daytona date because it was the only one available.
Consider the factors working against this race from an attendance standpoint. The weather this time of year in Atlanta is generally gray and miserable, the kind of not-quite-sun, not-quite-snow that inspires ennui and bad poetry. Plus, NASCAR scheduled the very first race after Daytona for the second-closest track to Daytona, which means that all but the most independently wealthy of the mobile RV segment of the fanbase would opt for warm Florida over drizzly Georgia. (During last week's Daytona 500, Fox's Mike Joy advised fans on the way home from Florida to stop in Atlanta. It was a good, if ridiculously far-fetched, effort.)
Granted, there's a case to be made that at-track attendance is less important than ratings, that as long as the product is delivered to the viewing public via NASCAR's massive new television contracts, it doesn't much matter the source. Onscreen, Atlanta looks like Texas looks like Charlotte looks like Kentucky looks like ... you get the idea. Of course, the scattered stands are a bit of a discordant backdrop, like a symphony with one kazoo, but mathematically, you can make a case that the millions watching on TV carry greater weight than the tens of thousands pushing through the turnstiles at any given track.
Atlanta itself also carries a measure of blame; this is a fickle, front-running sports town. The track lost a date a few years back in large part because of attendance (and because track owner Speedway Motorsports Inc. wanted to give a date to Kentucky). So the city's rep does it no favors.
Plus, the track date is a bit of a moving target. Too early in the year, and you get the chilly mess of Sunday. Too late in the spring, and the temperature heats up hot enough to cook infield fans in their tents. Wait until after August, and college football and the NFL claim a huge chunk of potential ticket-buyers.
Nothing's ever simple in NASCAR; every action has a thousand unintended reactions. Still, this is one that,at first glance, seems fairly easy to implement: start the west coast swing one week earlier, and slot Atlanta into the season's fifth week. (Mean temperature data for the past three years, the only available: 64, 55, 70. A wee bit better than Sunday.)
Atlanta's one of NASCAR's best tracks from a pure driving perspective, as well as one of its most historic. Drivers love racing here, and championships have been won here. It deserves a better date, a better fate than Daytona afterthought.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. (Full disclosure, he lives in Atlanta.) Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
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