Chase Elliott’s season changed in one lap at the end of the Quaker State 400 NASCAR Cup Series race on June 28 at EchoPark Speedway.
Elliott emerged from a pack of contenders with a huge run on the final lap to pass Brad Keselowski for the lead and hold on for his first victory of the season.
Elliott could have faced weekly questions about playoff cutlines and points arithmetic without this victory despite owning the series’ best average finish, especially if Keselowski would have won and locked into the postseason from outside the top 25 in points.
Now, NASCAR’s most popular driver is locked into the playoffs as one of 12 different winners and suddenly well within range of the regular-season points title.
Here are the winners and losers from the June 28 eventful NASCAR Cup Series race at Atlanta:
Elliott surely has had enough of the winless streak talk and is glad to avoid eight more weeks of playoff cutline despite having the best average finish this season.
Elliott earned his first win of the year with a last-lap pass of Brad Keselowski for the lead, and celebrated at his home track with a bit more gusto than is normal. Elliott’s 44-race winless streak is now a one-race winning streak.
The driver of the No. 9 Chevrolet also climbs to 37 points behind William Byron for the regular-season points lead. With two road courses upcoming, Elliott should be able to continue his move up the standings.
This was a two-pronged good day for Alex Bowman, especially on the final lap.
Bowman helped teammate Chase Elliott to the lead on the final lap, then battled Brad Keselowski instead of push the Ford toward the leader. A Keselowski win (or any first-time winner this season) would have further cut into the slight cushion that Bowman has toward the playoff cutline.
And while Elliott earned his first win of the year, he was already well ahead of Bowman in the playoff picture. No harm, all celebration for Hendrick Motorsports.
A third-place finish and a good points day helps too for the driver of the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, as he hops over Bubba Wallace in the standings while moving to 39 points ahead of the cutline.
The Atlanta runner-up finish will be the most bitter second-place run in recent memory for Keselowski, whose No. 6 Ford continues to show up-front pace. He just can’t quite finish up there yet in 2025.
Keselowski led at the white flag, but Alex Bowman’s push of Hendrick teammate Chase Elliott allowed Elliott to drive past Keselowski through turns 1 and 2. Once Bowman got side-by-side with Keselowski for second, Keselowski’s chances to win were over.
“Every loss hurts,” Keselowski said to TNT after the race. But this one may linger for a while.
The more Keselowski runs up front, the more he’ll continue to want to make a mark in the Cup playoffs. But unless he wins over the next two months, it’ll be as a non-playoff spoiler.
It was a long evening for Trackhouse Racing at Atlanta, with all four cars involved in multiple crashes across the 260 laps.
Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez’s day ended in the 21-car crash early in Stage 2, with Chastain’s spin across the track springing the melee.
Connor Zilisch got minor damage in the accident, though he ended up finishing a team-best 11th amongst the carnage.
Shane van Gisbergen spun later in the race through the grass in the frontstretch and finished in 24th.
For Chastain (33rd-place finish), SVG and Zilisch, there was no long-term impact to their days at Atlanta. But Suarez’s chances of making the playoffs continue to dwindle after a DNF at a track in which he had won at previously. Suarez (34th-place finish) won’t points his way into the 16-driver field, so a win somewhere else will have to do. He should do better at the Chicago street course and at Sonoma.
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