HAMPTON, Ga. — A lap 69 Big One in Saturday’s (June 28) Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway decimated half the field and took out entire teams in a race where teamwork makes the difference between winning and losing.
Only a few cars escaped without a scratch, and multi-car teams were completely decimated. The entire Team Penske lineup was in the garage, while Joe Gibbs Racing, 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports each had one driver left (Ty Gibbs, Tyler Reddick and Zane Smith, respectively) that was capable of winning.
The two teams that lucked out? Hendrick Motorsports and RFK Racing.
The Hendrick teammates of Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott along with the RFK teammates of Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher either cleared or escaped the Big One with minimal damage, leaving them as the only teams with a pair of cars that could work together for the remainder of the race.
The quartet proceeded to dominate, leading 129 of the final 190 laps. The RFK duo was running 1-2 with 40 laps left, but Keselowski lost his dancing partner when Buescher got chucked out of the top five in the closing laps with an ill-handling car.
“We were fast; (Brad and I) were able to work together pretty well,” Buescher said. “We got far enough in a run where handling was definitely a balance offset for us, and I wasn’t able to stay connected as well as I needed to the No. 6 to keep us out front.”
Keselowski still had a chance, but he’d have the brave the final laps without the No. 17 by his side.
The intensity of the racing ramped up as the laps ticked down, and no lead was safe. Drivers were darting to the inside and taking any run that they could, and the result was a thrilling conclusion that saw eight lead changes in the final 20 laps.
The grand finale came at the white flag, as Elliott and Bowman charged back to the front of the field and lined up on the inside to pass Keselowski and take the lead. Elliott was clear to the point with the help of his teammate, while Keselowski — who lost his dance partner in Buescher — helplessly looked on as the No. 9 powered by to take the checkered flag.
“The No. 9 (Elliott) just had the No. 48 (Bowman) behind him giving him a huge push, and there was nothing I could do to cover that,” Keselowski said. “When we 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.”
“I got shuffled back and ended up behind (Elliott) in third and was just trying to use the momentum and push, and I’m glad it worked out for Chase,” Bowman added.
Saturday night became a team win for Hendrick, as Elliott broke a 44-race winless streak by winning in front of his home state fans for just the second time in his NASCAR Cup Series career.
But for Bowman, he was the teammate that left Saturday night without a trophy. That’s meaningful for him, a winless streak of his own reaching a full year with the Cup Series headed to the Chicago Street Course next weekend. Despite being the defending champ there, he would have loved to punch a ticket to the playoffs with his Ally Chevrolet, not Elliott’s No. 9, sitting in victory lane here in Atlanta.
“Unfortunately, just the way it played out, there really wasn’t [an opportunity] once I lost control of the race in the closing laps,” Bowman said.
“… I just couldn’t keep (the lead). I wish it would have gone differently.”
It’s the downside of the teamwork at these tracks. While the draft keeps you both in front, only one driver gets to call himself a winner.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf