The Rinnai 250 is a NASCAR Xfinity Series stock car race held at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia, a few miles south of Atlanta. This race has long served as Atlanta's lone Busch/Nationwide Series date, and has been shuffled around the schedule several times. From its inception until 2001 the 300-mile race was run as part of Atlanta's spring Winston Cup race weekend, as the then-Busch Series ended its season at a different track than the then-Winston Cup series.
Following the transfer of the season ending Cup series race from Atlanta to Homestead-Miami Speedway after the 2001 season (although due to extenuating circumstances the 2001 Atlanta fall race was not the final race of the season), the now 312-mile race was moved to Atlanta's fall race weekend where it remained until Aaron's Rental, who was sponsoring the race, chose instead to sponsor the lone Busch event at Talladega. The race gained sponsorship from GlaxoSmithKline through its Nicorette brand and moved back to its traditional spring date.
In September 2008, NASCAR officials announced that Nicorette would not renew its corporate sponsorship for race after the 2008 season. On October 26, 2008 it was announced that Unilever's deodorant brand Degree will take over sponsorship of this race starting in 2009. It was later announced that the now-Degree V12 300 would be moving to September as part of the latest round of NASCAR realignment, which resulted in the Pep Boys Auto 500, the AMP Energy 500 at Talladega, and the Pepsi 500 at Fontana trading places. The Degree V12 300 took the place of the Camping World RV Service 300 on NASCAR's Labor Day weekend race schedule and serves as an accompanying race to the AdvoCare 500.
In 2015, the Xfinity race at Atlanta moved along with the Cup race (Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500) to the second weekend of the season and ran as a doubleheader on Saturday afternoon along with the Camping World Truck Series. The race was also reduced to 250 miles in order to make the race a doubleheader on the same day.
Jeff Gordon, Mike Skinner, Jamie McMurray, and Carl Edwards got their first series wins at Atlanta.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Past winners
- 1993: Race postponed from March to November due to Southeastern Blizzard.
- 1998: After reconfiguration of the track between the two 1997 Cup races, the track was remeasured to 1.54 miles and laps reduced to 195 laps as a result.
- 2000:''' Race started during the day, but finished under the lights due to a rain delay of almost 6 hours on Lap 92.
- 2004 and 2008: Race extended due to a green-white-checker finish.
Multiple winners (drivers)
Multiple winners (teams)
Manufacturer wins
Television broadcasters
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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