Atlanta had about 1/2 the usual number of cars. NHRA, and especially Division 2, have done a rotten job of scheduling for a long time. They have the Bowling Green points race, Indy, Atlanta points race, and Charlotte on consecutive weekends. A ton of cars would normally go to at least 3 of the 4 races, if they had just a little down time in there. A lot of people go to Bowling Green, then go straight to Indy, that's twelve days straight if you get to Bowling Green on Thursday evening, go to Indy and stay until Tuesday. If you went to Atlanta on Thursday evening, and stayed until Sunday night, then went to a 4 day
race at Charlotte on Wednesday evening, you'd have two days at home between them. That's another week, not counting any travel time, so you'd have near twenty days away, with not much down time at home and work between those two stretches. Even if you work for yourself, it is hard to be away from home and work that much in that period of time. If you work for someone else, it is even harder.
It's not much different than the crappy Division 2 schedule over all. They have a lot of races right together in February and March, in Florida (as if there was only one state in Division 2). Then the three National Events (who's idea was it to have Bristol in June or July, there's not any air there in April or May, never mind June or July). Then a dead space for the rest of the summer, then Atlanta and Charlotte on consecutive weekends in September, followed by Reynolds in October (and they moved it to the middle of October instead of near the end of the month). They're asking people to take a lot of time off in short periods, plus, there's not a single Division race in Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, or South Carolina, the only Division races are in Georgia and Florida.
Not only that, they put Bristol and Norwalk on top of each other, among a lot of other scheduling foolishness. You'd think NHRA never looked at a calender and a road map when they made the schedule, and the Divisions scheduled their races just to piss each other off.