Quaker State 400: Chase Elliott survives Atlanta chaos, ends 44-race winless streak

HAMPTON, Ga. — Hometown hero Chase Elliott snapped a 44-race winless streak in the NASCAR Cup Series with a victory at EchoPark Speedway after surviving a wild and chaotic Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart.

The Hendrick Motorsports driver has been one of the best, most consistent drivers in the Cup Series, but just could not find Victory Lane until Saturday night in the Peach State. Eighteen races in, Elliott still has not finished outside of the top 20 this season, and he is the only driver in the sport to achieve that.

“Unbelievable… unbelievable. How about that?” Elliott said. “Are you kidding me? I’ve never in my life… This is unbelievable. Thank you guys so much. What a special car and just a huge thanks to NAPA Auto Parts and everything they do for me and to benefit Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Rhealynn Mills designed to fast NAPA Chevrolet tonight, so this was a lot of fun. This right here is something I’ll never forget. Thank you guys so much.

“Well I just think that, honestly, all the cards fell on 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. I’m so glad we got to run that thing out there to the end. And yeah, just again, thank you so much for everybody that has made this possible. This is the ninth year of Desi9n to Drive. What an incredible way to celebrate that. Some great partners… Chevrolet, say hey to Mr. Hendrick at home. Thanks for sticking with me, pal, and yeah, just again, thanks to all you guys because this right here is… you can’t dream of this.”

Brad Keselowski had his best run of the 2025 season, as the 2012 Cup Series champion has had a very rough start to the year. Coming into the 400-mile race, Keselowski was 30th in the points, with just three top-10 finishes. Now, the RFK Racing team owner/driver has shown more pace each week, which includes a second-place finish at Atlanta.

“The 9 just had the 48 behind him giving him a huge push and there was nothing I could do to cover that,” Keselowski said. “When had our cars linked up at RFK, we could do the same thing, but we lost that and it was just kind of a two-on-one and I fought as hard as I could.”

Alex Bowman had another great performance for the third consecutive race after multiple weeks of finishing 29th or worse. His third-place finish at Atlanta, after finishing fourth in Mexico City and 11th at Pocono, earned him his fifth top five of the year as he looks to make a push toward the Cup Series Playoffs.

“I needed to not be in the lead as early as I was,” Bowman said. “I felt like whoever was leading was kind of a sitting duck there at the end with how good everyone’s cars were driving. I just got shuffled back. We were coming back through the field and got back to third. We had a really good No. 48 Ally Chevrolet tonight. Happy for the No. 9 team. It’s a big win for them. Proud of everyone at Hendrick Motorsports and we’ll keep on digging.”

The results from the 2025 Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart at EchoPark Speedway are listed below:

CHAOS

There was one word that can be used to describe the Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart: Chaotic.

Multiple incidents took out many drivers in multicar wrecks, including a “Big One” that involved 19 cars.

All three Team Penske drivers (Austin Cindric, Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano) were heavy favorites to win the race after not only an impressive qualifying effort, but the pace the team shows at every drafting-style race track. However, all three cars were involved in the aforementioned incident that resulted in the Penske drivers finishing 36th (Logano), 38th (Cindric) and 40th (Blaney).

Other Race Facts

This race marked the debut of the NASCAR In-Season Challenge, which is a 32-driver bracket-style tournament that was created for the drivers to race for a $1 million prize. After just one race, multiple brackets have already been busted due to the number of upsets.

For example, the No. 1 seed Denny Hamlin finished worse than No. 32 seed Ty Dillon, which means Hamlin has been eliminated from the tournament that was originally his idea. Other notable upsets included Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (No. 29 seed) over Christopher Bell (No. 4 seed), Noah Gragson (No. 31 seed) over Chase Briscoe (No. 2 seed) and Carson Hocevar (No. 27 seed) over Ryan Blaney (No. 7 seed).

There were only four of 40 drivers who were not involved in any incidents all night long. Those four drivers were Chase Elliott, Chris Buescher, Zane Smith and Tyler Reddick.

Before Elliott’s victory, there was only one driver in the top 23 who had won a Cup Series race in 2025. That driver was Kyle Larson, who finished 17th.

Reddick’s fourth-place finish was his best finish since Darlington back in early April. Reddick also earned his first stage win of the season and now has the most points among all drivers who have yet to win in 2025.

Hendrick Motorsports now owns the top-three positions in the Cup Series standings. William Byron is the points leader, followed by Elliott (second) and Larson (third).

This was the first race under the newly branded “EchoPark Speedway,” as the track was previously known as Atlanta Motor Speedway.

GRID RANKING

Drivers in the NASCAR GRID Rating all had races they would like to forget. Besides Kyle Larson, who finished 17th, the rest of the drivers all finished in 30th or worse.

The next race on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Grant Park 165 at the Chicago Street Course on Sunday, July 6. Coverage will begin at 2 p.m. ET on TNT.

GRID Network

GRID Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GridNetworkTV

GRID X: https://x.com/GridNetworkTV

GRID Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/gridnetworktv.bsky.social

GRID TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gridnetworktv

GRID Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/GridNetworkTV

GRID Facebook: https://facebook.com/GridNetworkTV

GRID Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gridnetworktv/

GRID YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GRIDNetworkTV