2006 Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway

Atlanta Motor Speedway is a very fast 1.54 mile quad-oval that has a long history of great races and thrilling finishes. The 2006 Golden Corral 500 brings the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup stars back to the east coast where they haven't raced since the Daytona 500. Expect extremely high speeds and tight racing as Atlanta seems to thrive on side-by-side battles to the line.

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Atlanta Motor Speedway is l.54 mile quad-oval with 24 degrees of banking in the turns. Because the cars don't use the speed-sapping restrictor plates here the average speeds in Atlanta are even faster than the superspeedways of Daytona and Talladega. This is a very fast race track that has a history of truly great racing.

325 Laps = 500 Miles

Jimmie Johnson is off to an incredible start to the the 2006 season and is out front in the points.

The battle is on to break into the top ten as Dale Earnhardt Jr. is knocking on the door. Junior is in eleventh just four points behind Jeff Burton.

Top Ten

1. Jimmie Johnson -0
2. Matt Kenseth -52
3. Kasey Kahne -85
4. Casey Mears -86
5. Mark Martin -110
6. Kyle Busch -137
7. Clint Bowyer -151
8. Elliott Sadler -155
9. Jeff Gordon -166
10. Jeff Burton -167

One of the big stories this weekend will be Craftsman Truck Series regular Bill Lester. Bill will attempt to qualify for this weekend's NEXTEL Cup race in Bill Davis Racing's #23 Dodge.

If he makes the show Lester will become the first African-American to start a Cup series event since Willy T. Ribbs ran three races in 1986. Expect to see lots of coverage of Lester with references to Ribbs and Wendell Scott. Diversity is one of NASCAR's goals and they will want to make a big deal out of this.

TV: Fox Sunday, March 19th 1:00PM Eastern.

Radio: PRN and XM Satellite

Actual Race: 1:30 p.m. Eastern

$4,843,713

A year ago Carl Edwards burst into the NASCAR spotlight by winning both the Busch Series event and the NEXTEL Cup event. Carl out-dueled Jimmie Johnson, beating him back to the finish line by just .028 seconds.

This thrilling finish balanced out the bad start when a lap one crash damaged more than ten cars and caused a red flag while NASCAR cleaned up the mess. Lets hope that we don't see a repeat of that mess again this year.

Carl Edwards swept Atlanta last year winning both NEXTEL Cup races and one of the Busch races here. He has to be my top pick to keep the winning streak alive.

There are a bunch of guys who would make a good backup pick. Jimmie Johnson is having an incredible season so far. Also Jimmie dominated this race last year until Edwards nipped him at the line.

Edwards' teammate Greg Biffle also had strong runs here last year and he has also had fast cars so far in 2006.

Mark Martin, another of Edwards' teammates, was leading here in the fall last year when he was caught speeding on pit road. Mark still managed to battle back to third.

While any of them would make a good backup I can only pick one. Jimmie Johnson is too obvious of a pick so I'm going the other way. The NASCAR Gods owe Greg Biffle one after his unfortunate blown engine in California so I'm going with Biffle as my backup pick this week.