Who… should you be talking about after the race?
With a total of 46 lead changes at the start-finish line among 13 drivers, there were no sure bets on Saturday night (June 28) at the newly-renamed EchoPark Speedway in Hampton, Ga. Joey Logano led the most laps at 51, but all of them came before the lap 68 crash that ended Logano’s bid prematurely.
Late in the race, Brad Keselowski was the driver to beat, as he passed the lead around with Alex Bowman and Zane Smith, but he found himself in the unenviable position of leading with a couple of laps to go, which gave Chase Elliott just enough time to make one last run to the point. Bowman played the good teammate, appearing to forego a last-lap run at Elliott to hold up the No. 6 just enough to keep Keselowski from a run in the last corner as Elliott went on to win the 2025 Quaker State 400.
Elliott took home his first win of 2025 by .168 seconds over Keselowski, Bowman, Tyler Reddick and Erik Jones. Hailing from Dawsonville, Ga., Elliott was a hometown favorite and a popular winner.
Elliott is the 12th different race winner in 2025 with eight races left before the playoffs. It’s the 20th win of Elliott’s career.
On the other hand…
Keselowski should have won. He’s a better speedway driver than most of the field who ended up in exactly the wrong spot, leading at the white flag with a pair of teammates working together to freeze him out.
Had Bowman chosen to race Elliott for the win, Keselowski probably would have been able to make one final run at Elliott in the final turn, but Bowman ultimately ran interference for Elliott, stopping that run from materializing.
Keselowski is running out of chances to squeeze into the playoffs this year, and he probably doesn’t really deserve to take a spot, especially with his driver Ryan Preece at the bubble on points. Still, Keselowski has worked hard to rebuild RFK Racing and has seemed to take one for the team many times in many ways.
He’s also one of the veteran drivers who has struggled with the Next Gen car. He has had some good runs, including a win last year at Darlington Raceway, but consistency has eluded him. Saturday should serve as a confidence booster, though, even without the W.
What… does this mean for the points standings?
William Byron remains on top even after finishing 37th, but there was some shuffling among the top five. Elliott vaults to second over teammate Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin, who each dropped one spot. Byron’s gap over second shrunk from 54 points to 37.
Tyler Reddick and Ryan Blaney swapped sixth and seventh, with Blaney falling a spot after his early exit Saturday night. Ross Chastain held steady in eighth. Chris Buescher’s top 10 moves him up two places to ninth and Chase Briscoe slipped from ninth to 10th.
Logano fell out of the top 10 after crashing out. Bowman and Bubba Wallace sit on the playoff bubble. Bowman is 39 points to the good, and Wallace has a 23-point cushion over Preece, who is looking to make the playoffs for the first time.
Other drivers making gains this week include Keselowski, who moves up three places to 27th as well as Jones, Carson Hocevar and Ty Dillon, who each grabbed two positions to 16th, 18th and 31st, respectively.
Where… did he come from?
The official race report lists Jones as having been involved in two incidents Saturday night: the multi-car pileup in stage two and a single-car spin with just over 60 laps to go. But if you think Jones’ night was a wasted effort, you’d be mistaken.
Jones and the No. 43 team have shown steady improvement in 2025 (so has teammate John Hunter Nemechek, which in turn only helps Jones’ cause). He persevered to a fifth-place finish Saturday night, his second top five of the year, doubling his 2024 season total. His average finish of 18.4 is up almost five positions over last year, and he’s currently a very respectable 16th in driver points, 49 points outside the playoff picture.
Jones and the No.43 team showed plenty of mettle at EPS, and while it’s too soon to say they’ll be hunting a win this year, it looks a lot more possible with every passing week.
When… was the moment of truth?
There were a couple of things this week that may have a longer-term effect on the season than the results of a single race.
The importance of handling sets EPS apart from the true superspeedways. While Daytona International Speedway is more of a handling track than Talladega Superspeedway, EPS sets the standard for the role setups play in the packs. The leaders weren’t immune; Logano led the opening 48 laps but struggled with a tight car for most of his time out front, and even more so in the pack.
Because of the emphasis on the setup and the greater role of the teams because of it, EPS could make a strong case for swapping places with Talladega on the schedule. Coupled with a solid caution-free final 28 laps (and just one single-car incident in the final 50) and plenty of passing attempts during those closing laps, this is a track that should play a role in the championship over its bigger cousin’s roulette-style racing.
Saturday night marked the halfway point of the 2025 season…and it also marked 2023 champion Blaney’s sixth DNF of the year. Bad luck, definitely not all of his doing, has plagued Blaney, who does a have a win and the playoff spot it brings.
It’s been feast or famine for Blaney; He’s ninth in regular season points and has seven top fives and eight top 10s. Translation: if he finishes, it’s nearly always a quality top-10 finish. Still being on pace for a dozen early exits is a trend that won’t get Blaney deep into the playoffs, so turning things around should be a primary focus in the next eight weeks.
Why… should you be paying attention this week?
It you were following the In-Season Challenge bracket deal, well, things took a turn in Atlanta as many of the top seeds were knocked out before halfway. A lot of brackets were busted practically before the whole thing began.
The in-season tournament is a gimmick, no two ways about it, to hold fan interest at a point in the season where playoff-bound teams are spending their energy on those future races and the racing sometimes has a tendency to stagnate. NASCAR didn’t do a phenomenal job of promoting it, and many of the teams involved weren’t particularly enthusiastic even about the prospect of a million-dollar prize.
Still, if you’re a fan of underdogs taking out the usual suspects, even if it doesn’t result in a race win, there are a few drivers still on the board that could drum up some new fans over the next few weeks, which is good for the sport overall if that can translate into sustained interest that sponsors take notice of.
Among those outside the top 20 in points and the general spotlight still left are Ty Dillon (whose hilarious response to ousting Hamlin alone will win him some admiration), Keselowski, Nemechek, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ty Gibbs, Noah Gragson and Zane Smith—seven of the 16 drivers still alive. Three more (Preece, Hocevar and Jones) are in the top 20 but also outside the playoff picture for now.
Even with the less than stellar lead-in, a little unpredictability and an extra boost for some teams that don’t always get a piece of the spotlight won’t hurt the sport, and as gimmicks go, this one is pretty harmless to the championship, so it could be good for some fun for a couple more weeks.
How… did this race stack up?
The final 50 laps boasted some of the best racing fans have been treated to this year.
The racing in Atlanta still resembles Daytona Lite a little too much. More than 30 cars were involved to some extent in incidents, and that’s far too many to call it good racing from start to finish (unless you watch for that sort of thing, then it was probably a great day). NASCAR’s official results list 23 cars involved in the Big One alone.
At this point in time, that’s on NASCAR because the superspeedway package that’s also used at EPS is designed to keep the cars in one big pack, which creates the multi-car crashes. Breaking the pack up would drastically improve safety but would leave a faction of fans disappointed in the lack of carnage.
What makes the racing at EPS better than either Daytona or Talladega is that the packs aren’t quite as tight and drivers can, at least sometimes, avoid trouble or at least keep some incidents to a single car.
That allows drivers to race a bit more — they didn’t simply ride for 90% of the laps in hopes of not crashing. When energy builds as it naturally does in a race, especially in the closing laps, it’s not always the ominous, dark energy that promises a big incident more often than not.
Drivers could make moves without upsetting their cars and, while draft help was still needed, hold a spot on their own for longer than at the bigger tracks. The fight for the lead in the final 50 laps was intense, and drivers could and did make moves to pass.
The huge crash still leaves a bad taste, but as the pavement ages, it may resolve itself, at least to an extent. All in all, fans got a better race than at the true superspeedways because drivers could and did race for position all day long.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.