What The Metrics Had To Say About Atlanta

The world of sports data is constantly changing, with more information available to teams, athletes, and even the common fan that can be used to predict performance trends. NASCAR is no different, and the author of this post has built a number of analytical metrics to help give race fans a more advanced view of the action on the track—because, as any driver can attest to, auto racing isn't always a fair sport.

The following numbers – explained in full detail here – are designed to measure driver performance in various aspects of each race, many of which come from NASCAR’s Loop Data. They are ranked by True Driver Rating (TDR), a variation on NASCAR’s Driver Rating, which incorporates factors such as speed, track position, passing, luck, and equipment strength in order to best estimate how well each driver performed during an event.

The metrics from Sunday's Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway are as shown below:

The 2024 Cup Series playoffs opened up with a race that had its share of twists and turns, yet as shown above, was all things considered relatively fair. In fact, one of the only notable outliers is winner Joey Logano, who ranked only ninth in TDR in large part due to the fact that he had a negative pass differential.

Team Penske was the class of the field on Sunday, but Logano found himself in position to win after trouble plagued both of his teammates, who had arguably more impressive runs. Austin Cindric suffered issues on pit road after leading a race-high 92 laps while Ryan Blaney was involved in a late wreck. Blaney still fought back to finish third in spite of his damage, earning him the second-highest TDR score behind only Alex Bowman.

None of Bowman's numbers jump out as exceptionally eye-popping, and his score of 200.44 is rather low for a TDR winner -- in fact, it's the lowest this season. He had a solid race all-around, though, with an Average Running Position of 5.3 and solid passing marks while his Hendrick Motorsports team lagged slightly behind Penske and Trackhouse Racing. This is Bowman's first TDR win since the first Darlington race in 2020.

With Bowman's score being on the low side for a TDR winner, that means many others weren't far behind. Even though Logano placed only ninth, his score of 152.44 indicates he still had a strong run, and he also held the highest share of Expected Wins Earned at .161 due to leading at the right time. Among those ranked between the two of them are Logano's Penske teammates Blaney and Cindric, as well as a pair of Bowman's teammates in William Byron and Chase Elliott in third and sixth, respectively.

Additionally earning spots in the top-10 were Trackhouse Racing's Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez, placing fourth and seventh. This was one of the better races for Trackhouse in 2024, and Suarez, the spring Atlanta winner, came home second on the track while taking top True Passer Rating marks. He seems to just have this track figured out, with five top-10 finishes in six races ever since Atlanta was repaved and reconfigured to race as a miniature superspeedway.

Also notable are two drivers at the very bottom of this week's metric chart, as they are two of the heavy championship favorites. That would be Kyle Larson, who suffered a hard crash near the end of the race's first stage, and Denny Hamlin, who was just painfully slow all weekend. For all of the criticism of Larson's tendency to crash out of races, at least he never has runs like Hamlin had on Sunday. In fact, despite completing every lap, Hamlin still had a worse Average Running Position than Larson, who completed only 55 of 266.

Both drivers rightfully finished near the back, and will now enter the next two weeks a bit more nervous about their championship hopes than they'd like to be. With playoff underdogs such as Bowman, Cindric, and Suarez shaking up the picture with strong runs in Atlanta, things look a bit unpredictable -- and yet on Sunday, it was a fair unpredictable, just as it should be.