Atlanta Superduperspeedway and Penalty Talk – Motorsports Tribune

That was certainly a race weekend, wasn’t it?

Atlanta Motor Speedway
Atlantadega
Atlanta Superduperspeedway

Whatever you want to call it nowadays, the Ambetter Health 400 weekend certainly produced no shortage of topics:

The Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski superspeedway duel
The racing product prior to the final green flag run
The crashing product on Saturday during a Trucks, Xfinity doubleheader
The Josh Williams situation

That is to say nothing of the lingering effects in the aftermath of the historic penalties doled out to Hendrick Motorsports and Kaulig Racing PLUS the Denny Hamlin actions detrimental penalty stemming from his comments on Action Detrimental.

It was certainly a race week, indeed.

HOW FORD WINS RIGHT NOW

It’s no secret that Ford Performance is third on the manufacturer pecking order right now and has been for the better part of a calendar year once teams started to figure out the Next Gen platform.

And yet, Joey Logano is the reigning Cup Series champion and now the most recent winner and it comes down to Blue Oval teams maximizing their performance at the tracks where they either have an advantage (superspeedways) or are largely on a level (short tracks and road courses) playing field.

Chevrolet has a well-documented aerodynamic advantage.

For a team like Penske to continue having chances, it comes down to maximizing tracks where horsepower matters (superspeedways) and a mechanical grip (short track, roads) advantage, according to team vice chairman Walt Czarnecki.  

“I think (winning Atlanta was) clearly very, very important, particularly when the Chevrolets have been running, starting with Daytona,” Czarnecki said.

“We had an opportunity at Daytona. Came up a little bit short there. I won’t say ‘struggled,’ that’s too strong a word, but the Chevrolets clearly have had an advantage.

“To come back and perform the way we did, not just Joey, but all the Fords, is a real plus, a real bonus for us. Again, a testimony to the people at Ford we work with, Doug Gates particularly. When I saw him a minute ago, I said, That was a Doug Gates power move that Joey made. Thanks to them.”

Logano knows his organizational strengths too and that’s what made this such an important race.

“I think the whole garage knows what direction we’ve gone at this point, where our strengths are going to be, where our weaknesses are going to be,” Logano said. “Our strengths definitely…