Georgia’s Chase Elliott showed on Saturday night that you can go home again and make everything peachy.
The Peach State native passed Brad Keselowski in Turn 1 on the final lap and won a wild, wreck-filled NASCAR Cup Series’ Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway in Hampton, Ga.
After moving to second place with two to go, the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet driver — winless through 17 races in 2025 — slipped below Keselowski’s No. 6 Ford and beat it to the checkers for his 20th career win and just his second in three seasons. He led for 41 laps, to 46 for Keselowski, in snapping a 44-race winless drought dating to his victory at Texas Motor Speedway in April 2024.
Elliott, the seven-time Most Popular Driver Award winner, earned a spot in NASCAR’s 10-race postseason.
“Honestly, all the cards fell in the right places in those last couple of laps — what a crazy race, man,” said Elliott, a Dawsonville native, after his second career Atlanta victory. “I don’t know if y’all had fun, but it was wild from my seat. Glad we got to run that thing out to the end.”
Keselowski fell victim to the Chevys of Hendrick teammates Elliott and Alex Bowman working together at the end. Elliott finished 0.168 seconds ahead of Keselowski and 0.170 seconds in front of teammate Bowman, who placed third.
“(Elliott) got a push from (Bowman) there,” said Keselowski. “If those guys would race, I could hold them off, but when they double-teamed me like that … same thing when we had a couple of teammates, we could hold them off. … I don’t think there was anything I could do differently.”
Tyler Reddick and Erik Jones completed the top-five finishers.
Chevrolet won for the sixth time in the past nine Atlanta events at the former Atlanta Motor Speedway.
In the track’s first race under its new name, Team Penske racer Joey Logano took the green flag and led seven more Fords in the season’s 18th race.
Logano’s No. 22 led every circuit as Fords owned the top six positions through 25 laps, but the No. 77 Chevrolet of Carson Hocevar was the biggest mover, climbing 23 spots to get to fourth on Lap 27.
The first caution on Lap 35 for rain resulted in a nearly 15-minute red flag. Logano led the first 49 laps, but the first melee occurred on Lap 57 as Christopher Bell lost control of his No. 20 Toyota to trigger a wreck with Ryan Blaney, Bubba Wallace, Kyle Larson and Austin Dillon.
That ended the 60-lap Stage 1 under caution with Austin Cindric as the winner. Fellow Fords driven by Keselowski and Logano trailed him.
The third caution on Lap 70 nearing Turn 3, from about eighth on back, created an even bigger mess.
Denny Hamlin, Logano, Ross Chastain, Cindric, Hocevar, William Byron and last week’s winner Chase Briscoe all suffered major damage in the 23-car accident that brought out a second red flag.
Stage 2, a 160-lap segment, produced the 1.54-mile tri-oval’s best racing — action that looked like recent finishes at the superspeedway as a hornet’s nest of drivers 10-deep fought for the bonus points.
At the end, a photo-finish showed Reddick clipping Elliott for the maximum amount, while Chris Buescher, Bowman and Jones rounded out the top five.
With 34 laps left, seventh-place Justin Haley was tapped by Ty Dillon’s No. 10 in a single-car incident for the 10th caution to set up the finish.
–Field Level Media
