Dale Earnhardt Jr. praises Atlanta Motor Speedway during intense final stage battle

Dale Earnhardt Jr. enjoyed what he saw from the NASCAR drivers competing at the Ambetter 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday. On X/Twitter, Earnhardt praised the drivers for being “mentally tough” during the final stage of the race and showed love for the racetrack.

“Man this racetrack has something special,” Earnhardt wrote. “I’m tensed up! What these drivers are doing is so mentally tough. Feels like everything is on edge.”

Atlanta Motor Speedway has a lot of NASCAR history. The governing body has had two races per year at the track since 1960 with one in the spring and one in the summer/fall.

In 2021, Atlanta Motor Speedway completed a repave that made the track look like a superspeedway. Before the repave began, Denny Hamlin spoke out on the lack of communication between the drivers and NASCAR.

“Just a broken down process and that’s what is so frustrating. The process is just broken,” Hamlin said at the time, per RacingNews.com. “I look at a lot of the responses and people are like, ‘why should they listen to you all because you’re always going to look at what’s in your best interest and agenda is.’ The thing is, as drivers, just tell us the agenda.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a request for NASCAR at Atlanta Motor Speedway

“Do you want speedway racing here? Okay. We don’t like it, but here’s what you need to do to get there. We’ll help you accomplish that, just tell us the goal.”

Before Sunday’s race, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a request for NASCAR at Atlanta Motor Speedway. “Now, we’re going to Atlanta. This track can’t change fast enough. Basically, we’re going to go to Atlanta, and we’re doing the same thing all over again,” Earnhardt Jr. stated, via the latest episode of The Dale Jr. Download. “… If I was Atlanta and NASCAR and whoever makes the decisions on competition, I would be looking for the very first opportunity to distance the package that we run there from what we run at Daytona and Talladega.

“I know we kind of do some, I’m sure, but I guess what I mean is, not so much the package or the specific parts and pieces, but the style of racing. … If this race is going to be the second race coming right off of what we see at Daytona, I don’t want to do two weeks of this.”

On3’s Steve Samra contributed to this story.