HAMPTON, Ga.—Kurt Busch put on a great show Sunday afternoon, muscling his car and holding off runner-up Jeff Gordon and third-place finisher Carl Edwards to win the Kobalt Tools 500.
It’s too bad there were so few race fans on hand to see Busch’s heroics in the 100th Sprint Cup race in the history of Atlanta Motor Speedway.
With other tracks like Kentucky Motor Speedway hungrily seeking its first Sprint Cup race, or places like Kansas Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway actively lobbying to earn a second race per season, the legendary AMS was practically a ghost town Sunday compared to last week’s sellout in Sin City. And that doesn’t bode well for AMS keeping two races going forward from here.
Click Here For More Photos From Kobalt Tools 500
While some media members estimated attendance at up to 75,000, others pegged the number closer to 45,000, which seemed far more realistic. The track seats 125,000.
Sure, the third-turn grandstands were pretty packed, but the frontstretch was half-full, if that. And just before the green flag dropped to start the race, the main parking lot behind the frontstretch was at least two-thirds empty.
I’ve seen shopping center parking lots with more cars in them. And unless AMS bused or helicoptered in thousands of fans who chose not to drive, the numbers simply weren’t there.
“What I find so discouraging (at all the empty seats) is I think this is one of the best race tracks,” said Gordon, whose first career Cup start was at Atlanta in the 1992 season finale. “To me, this is some of the best racing we’re putting on in the series anywhere we go.
“I know there’s a lot of race fans around here. I’m a little baffled by it. I’ve been hearing that they were going to have some empty seats. It’s really hard to say. That’s not my job, to figure that out. If I just base it off of the excitement that I see in the fans that I hear, the ones I hear from, my fans, the racing we’re putting out there, this place should be packed.”
So does that mean the spring race won’t be there next year, either? There has been a lot of discussion that Pocono and AMS are the most likely places to lose a race to another track—if a race date is to be taken away by NASCAR.
Click Here For More Photos From Kobalt Tools 500
Sunday’s turnout certainly didn’t help AMS’s chances, by any stretch.
“This is one of the best, if not the best, race tracks we go to as far as competition, on-track performance and passing and action and things like that,” said Edwards, who got his first career Cup victory at AMS in 2005. “It’s too bad there aren’t more fans in the grandstands.”
AMS has suffered through a continual downward trend in ticket sales over the last several years, so Sunday’s slim turnout is just a continuation of that slide.
| 
|