NASCAR at Atlanta results: Chase Elliott gets his first win of 2025 with a last lap pass on Brad Keselowski

HAMPTON, Ga. — With a last lap pass on another former NASCAR Cup Series champion, Chase Elliott shot past Brad Keselowski and to the checkered flag to win the Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway, earning his first win of the 2025 season and the 20th of his Cup career.

Elliott, the 2020 Cup champion and a native of Dawsonville, Georgia, earned his second career win at his home track in Atlanta after previously winning there in 2022.

In a scramble over the final 10 laps that saw multiple drivers swap the lead, Elliott seized on his chance at the white flag, using a push from Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman to shoot to the inside of Brad Keselowski, giving him the lead by the exit of turn 2. Bowman then took a run to the inside of Keselowski, putting them in a side-by-side race for second and giving Elliott all he needed to see in his rearview mirror.

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Steven Taranto

Despite being arguably the most ruthlessly consistent driver in Cup this season with not a single finish outside the top 20, the pressure had been mounting on Elliott to get a win and once again affirm his place as both a past champion and NASCAR’s perennial Most Popular Driver. Now, Elliott is in the winner’s column and can turn his focus to trying to win his second Cup championship.

“I’ve never in my life. I’ve never in my life. This is unbelievable,” Elliott told TNT Sports as the Georgia crowd voiced its thunderous approval for their local hero. “… Honestly, all the cards fell in the right places there those last couple laps. What a crazy race, man. I don’t know if y’all had fun, but it was wild from my seat. Glad we got to run that thing out there to the end … Thanks to all you guys, because this right here is — you can’t dream of this.”

Elliott’s win managed to keep NASCAR’s playoff picture fairly intact despite what the circumstances of the race created: On a lap 69 restart, 23 cars were swept up in a massive, field-clearing crash entering turn 3 that took out many contenders, including Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, William Byron and a host of others. In their place, the final laps saw drivers in deep points holes toward making the playoffs like Brad Keselowski and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., as well as those gunning for their first career win like Zane Smith, take turns at the front and threaten to upend the playoff grid.

Keselowski would end up finishing second over Bowman in third, Tyler Reddick in fourth, and Erik Jones in fifth. Stenhouse, Smith, Ty Dillon, Chris Buescher and Carson Hocevar made up the rest of the top 10.

The massive accident did little to dissuade the field from the sort of aggressive, pack-style racing that EchoPark Speedway has become known for since its 2022 reconfiguration, as 46 lead changes between 13 different drivers were counteracted by 10 cautions. One such caution involved Bubba Wallace, who spun and nosed into the wall off turn 2, forcing him to limp home in 22nd and put him in a precarious position as he tries to hold onto a playoff spot.

With Bowman finishing third, Wallace now holds the final spot above the playoff cut line by 23 points over Ryan Preece, who ended up 15th. Erik Jones’ fifth-place finish also continues a string of recent success that now puts him 49 points below the cut line, just ahead of A.J. Allmendinger (-58), whose 12th-place finish has him well-positioned to pounce with two road course races at Chicago and Sonoma next as NASCAR begins the month of July.