Atlanta Motor Speedway gearing up for March races

The first weekend of March has become race weekend in Georgia, with Atlanta Motor Speedway’s NASCAR weekend settling in as the follow-up to the season-opening Daytona 500.

Long home to a big fall race and for years the home to two races on the Sprint Cup Series circuit, Atlanta’s race weekend became a late winter affair in 2015, when Jimmie Johnson claimed victory on a cold March 1 with temperatures in the low-40s.

The weather was better last year — temperatures in the mid-60s, when Johnson repeated.

Now the speedway is preparing for its third season as the No. 2 race on the schedule. The Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 will take place at 2:30 p.m. on March 5, with QuikTrip — a chain of convenience stores with a strong presence in the Atlanta area — returning as the title sponsor for the third year.

Monster Energy is replacing Sprint as the top series’ title sponsor, but a formal series name has yet to be announced.

“Any time you make a change, it takes some time for people to get adjusted to it,” speedway president Ed Clark said. “This will be our third season being the second race of the year. Last year we had a great race, great weather, warm weather. That has helped us to be out ahead on ticket sales for next year. We’ve got a lot of really neat activation platforms coming forward in the next few months going into race time.

“(Race weekend) is really not that far away. We’re really working hard on it, and all things indicate we are in for one of the better events we’ve had here in awhile.”

The speedway held a news conference Tuesday to announce another company with ties to the Atlanta area, Peachtree City-based Rinnai America Corporation, as title sponsor for the track’s Xfinity Series race, the Rinnai 250, at 1:30 p.m. on March 4.

A Camping World Truck Series race, the Active Pest Control 200, will take place at 4:30 p.m. on March 4.

“It’s a great platform,” Clark said of the Rinnai sponsorship of the Xfinity Series race. “It’s a local company headquartered about 20 miles from here. That’s two of our three major sponsors now that are local, right here in our community. But this is much more than a race sponsorship. It’s going to be a partnership where Rinnai is going to use the facility just about 12 months out of the year, bring customers here, build relationships. We’ll help them with that.

“It’s a little different platform for us, but one we think has a bright future.”

This story was originally published December 6, 2016 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Atlanta Motor Speedway gearing up for March races."