The 2021 Spring Atlanta Review features dominance by Kyle Larson for the second week in a row. In everything except winning. All the points I was planning to make were made by Matt Weaver already, so I refer you to his well-written summary of the race.
Caution/Lead-O-Gram
As usual, we start off with the Caution-O-GramTM and Lead-O-GramTM.
Hamlin, Larson and Blaney were the only leaders, except for laps here and there as a result of green-flat pitting cycles.
Hamlin lead from the race start, but once he lost the lead, he didn’t get it back. Larson led 269/325 laps (82.7% of all laps), yet couldn’t get the lead back after Blaney passed him.
2021 Spring Atlanta by the Numbers
We had:
- 11 lead changes between 6 distinct leaders
- 5 cautions for 25 laps. That’s four spring races in a row with five cautions.
- 8 penalties
- 6 too fast on pit road
- 1 over-the-wall too soon
- 1 tire violation
- 3 drivers starting from the back
- 2 DNFs (one engine, one crash)
- 8.0 green-flag passes per lap – just below the 3-year average of 8.2
- A margin of victory (2.08 seconds) right at the three-year average of 2.15. The five-year average is 1.40 because of a very close finish in 2016.
- Fewer green-flag lead changes (8) than we normally have.
- Larson’s leading 82.7% of the laps is well above the average of 44% of laps
- 35.9% of the cars finished on the lead lap, compared with the track average of 33%
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