Five things we learned at Atlanta

PRINT EMAIL FACEBOOK DIGG TWITTER RSS SHARE

Kasey Kahne is poised to give team owner Richard Petty his first Chase appearance. Jason Smith/Getty Images Sport

Five things we learned this weekend in Atlanta:

1. Kasey Kahne will make the Chase. In the first five years of the Chase, owner Richard Petty never had a driver advance to the 10-race playoff. That will change this season, because Kahne -- the flagship driver for Richard Petty Motorsports -- all but locked up a spot on Sunday night when he won his second race of the season.

After a late-race caution, Kahne cruised past Kevin Harvick on the restart and then drove away from the field over the final laps. The victory moved him from 11th to fifth in the standings -- off the Chase bubble and into the Chase comfort zone -- and barring a mechanical failure or untimely accident on Saturday night in Richmond, he'll make NASCAR's playoff for the second time in his career.

Can Kahne compete for a championship? It's unlikely, given his up-and-down performances in recent races. Just two weeks ago he finished 28th at Bristol and appeared to be fading fast in the standings. But Kahne has always excelled on intermediate tracks like Atlanta's, and five of the 10 Chase races take place on these 1.5 to 2-mile venues. The key for Kahne will be to get off to a fast start in New Hampshire (where he finished 10th earlier this year) and have a solid run at the short track of Martinsville (where he finished 19th in the spring).

2. Matt Kenseth came up big. After Kenseth brushed the wall early on Sunday night, it looked like his Chase chances were shot. By lap 63, he had fallen to 29th, which prompted his 16-year-old son Ross to send out the following tweet: "Dad is struggling tonight. He was excited about his car until the green flag dropped. Hopefully Drew will wave his magic wand."

Drew is Kenseth's crew chief Drew Blickensderfer, and if this team has one hallmark -- remember, Kenseth and Blickensderfer won the first two races of the season, including the Daytona 500 -- it's that it finds speed in the car as the laps wind down. Well, the team did it again on Sunday. At each pit stop Blickensderfer ordered up several changes to the car's setup, and Kenseth steadily worked his way up through the field. On a night when he could have dropped as far as 14th in the standings, Kenseth finished seventh in Atlanta and is now in 12th place, holding a tenuous 20-point margin over Brian Vickers.

Kenseth is one of two drivers to have qualified for every Chase (the other is Jimmie Johnson), so he has experience on his side. But can he hold off Vickers? It won't be easy, because Vickers is on a roll right now. He's finished seventh or better in six of the past eight races, which shows he's peaking at the perfect time. Plus, I've been watching Vickers closely during the last few events -- I wrote about him two weeks ago in the magazine -- and right now the 25-year-old could be mistaken for Jimmie Johnson on the track, the way he's been smoothly darting between cars and keeping his fenders clean. The race between Vickers and Kenseth should be the most compelling one of the night at Richmond.

3. Carl Edwards will be OK. While tossing around a Frisbee with two of his friends last Wednesday on the University of Missouri campus in Columbia, Edwards broke two bones in his right foot. How did it happen? One of his buddies threw the Frisbee right in between Edwards and his other friend. The two lunged at the Frisbee. Edwards' right foot was stepped on, and right away he heard a popping sound. Edwards' wife, who is a doctor, helped Edwards get a quick X-ray, which revealed that the second and fourth metatarsal bones were broken.

Edwards' right foot is his throttle foot -- his money foot -- and before the race he worried that the injury could derail his championship hopes. Well, it won't. To read more about Edwards, who finished 37th on Sunday because of a punctured radiator, and why he's considered a dark horse by many in the garage to win it all come November, check out my story in the magazine this week.

4. Danica is coming to NASCAR -- someday. In what can hardly be described as surprising news, ESPN's Ed Hinton reported this weekend that Danica Patrick likely would compete in a few Nationwide Series races next season to see if she has what it takes to cut it in stock cars. I've spent a lot of time with Patrick over the past few years, and she's consistently said that she'd like to try her hand in NASCAR. I'm guessing that she'll soon sign a three-year deal with the IRL's Andretti-Green Racing (her current team) that will allow her to compete in a handful of Nationwide and Truck series races when the Indy cars aren't running. Her ultimate dream is to win the Indy 500 -- this is what's been on her mind since she was a little girl -- and I think she'll take three more shots at it. After that, in 2013, she'll be in NASCAR fulltime. At least that's what my crystal ball says.

5. Attendance is finally on the upswing. Back in the spring there were wide swaths of empty seats at Atlanta Motor Speedway for the Cup race. The joint holds 124,000, but most seasoned eyes in the media center put the attendance figure that day at 60,000, which included thousands of fans in the infield.

What a difference a few months can make. On Sunday night the stands were packed. At least 100,000 were on hand, which made this race the most heavily-attended one in Atlanta since the '90s. Of course, the fact that it was held on Labor Day weekend likely contributed to the attendance surge, but this was the second straight race with a large turnout. Two weeks ago NASCAR had a sellout in Bristol. The trying economic times aren't over for NASCAR -- sponsorship dollars are still tough to come by -- but perhaps we're seeing signs the sport is starting to recover at the gate from the global recession.