June
30,
2025
Alex
Bowman
of
Hendrick
Motorsports
was
one
of
the
top
contenders
of
the
Quaker
State
400
at
Atlanta
Motor
Speedway
for
the
win.
Bowman
started
the
race
from
the
ninth
position,
but
lost
ground
throughout
the
first
stage.
He
ended
stage
read more...
June 30, 2025
Legacy Motor Club's Erik Jones placed fifth at the end of Saturday's Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Jones started 26th at the beginning of the race, but remained in the back during the first stage, finishing in 31st and earning no stage points. Jones successfully avoided the race's biggest wreck on lap 69, and from there, he became more competitive as the race progressed. The No. 43 Toyota driver ended the second stage in fifth despite also making contact with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and sustaining damage. In the final stage, Jones kept quietly remaining in the top 10 until lap 196 when he spun around the track, but obtained little damage and was able to continue. After multiple pit stops, Jones ended up getting new tires and charged through the field to regain fifth place by the end of the race. Jones secured his second career top-5 finish at Atlanta, marking his second of the 2025 season.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: NASCAR.com
June
30,
2025
Tyler
Reddick
of
23XI
Racing
finished
Saturday
night's
Quaker
State
400
at
Atlanta
Motor
Speedway
in
the
fourth
position
after
being
one
of
the
top
competitors
for
the
win.
Reddick
began
the
race
from
the
23rd
position,
but
lost
ground
in
read more...
June 29, 2025
Chase Elliott is back in NASCAR Cup Series victory lane, as the Hendrick Motorsports driver showed impressive drafting and passing skills to take the win in Saturday night's Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway. The victory snaps a 44-race winless streak for the 2020 Cup Series Champion and vaults Chase into second-place in the points standings behind his teammate, William Byron. After the race, Elliott remarked, "All the cards fell on the right places there those last couple laps,. What a crazy race. ... It was wild from my seat. I'm so glad we got to run that thing out there to the end." It was the second career win for Elliott at Atlanta, with his first one coming back in 2022. The Cup Series now heads to the Chicago Street Course, where Chase has a third-place finish to his credit (in 2023).
--Jordan McAbeeSource: FOX Sports
June 29, 2025
Brad Keselowski has had a very rough 2025 season, but there was a glimmer of hope near the end of Saturday night's race at EchoPark Speedway (Atlanta), as the No. 6 Ford was in firm control of the race lead for most of the final stage. However, when the checkered flag flew, Keselowski was just one position short, finishing second to race-winner Chase Elliott in an epic final few laps of racing. On the team radio after crossing the finish line, Keselowski remarked, "I just needed a teammate." He needed someone to give him a push to get back around Elliott. Keselowski is now 27th in the points standings but will likely need a win if he wants to make the playoffs this season.
--Jordan McAbeeSource: Catchfence
June 29, 2025
After driving from 26th to second in the February Atlanta race, Carson Hocevar had another stellar run there on Saturday night as he drove from 30th to 10th despite getting caught up in the Lap 70 Big One. In the first stage, Hocevar arguably demonstrated winning speed as he drove from his subpar starting spot to finish fifth in Stage 1, but he pitted during the Stage 1 caution and almost all the other drivers who did crashed on the ensuing restart, while the drivers who stayed out mostly did not. Nonetheless, he didn't have as much damage as a lot of other drivers, which allowed him to receive the free pass on the next caution and make up his lost lap. He laid low for the remainder of Stage 2, probably to avoid crashing again, but re-emerged in the top 10 in the last 60 laps. Although he remains 62 points below the playoff cut line, he did upset Ryan Blaney to advance to Round 2 in the in-season challenge.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
June 29, 2025
William Byron retained a 37-point lead in the regular season NASCAR Cup Series championship despite being eliminated in the lap 70 Big One because most of the other top points contenders also crashed. Byron was very fast like his Hendrick teammates except Kyle Larson, driving from his 18th place starting to position to finish 4th in Stage 1. However, most of the drivers who ran up front in Stage 1 elected to pit while nine drivers stayed out. Since the wreck started with eighth-place Denny Hamlin on the next restart, almost all the cars who pitted on that caution crashed while those who stayed out did not. Although the crash did not really affect Byron's playoff position much, it did eliminate him from the In-Season Challenge as Byron's opponent Ryan Preece finished the race.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
June 29, 2025
Although Denny Hamlin entered NASCAR's In-Season Challenge as the No. 1 seed at Atlanta, Hamlin was mostly a nonfactor, only driving from 33rd to 28th in Stage 1 before staying out of the pits on the stage break caution, which elevated him to seventh. On the ensuing restart, Chris Buescher let off the gas to avoid running into Chase Elliott, which triggered a stackup that caused Justin Haley to run into Buescher, John Hunter Nemechek to run into Haley, Hamlin to run into Nemechek, and Todd Gilliland to run into Hamlin, triggering the race's 23-car Big One. Since Hamlin's bracket opponent Ty Dillon mostly averted the wreck, Hamlin was eliminated from bracket contention. His playoff position didn't shift much since points leader William Byron also crashed and Hamlin ended up only losing two points to him, now sitting 80 points behind.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
June 29, 2025
Despite entering NASCAR's in-season challenge as the 32nd and last seed, Ty Dillon utilized a fast Kaulig Racing car and a nifty move to swerve around the Big One in Saturday's Atlanta race to finish eighth, giving him his first top-10 finish at Atlanta and first of the season. It allowed him to upset top seed Denny Hamlin, whose spinout in a restart stackup caused him to crash out of the race. However, even after the crash, Dillon was barely running in the top 15 until he broke into the top 10 before a caution came out shortly before the race's halfway point. Despite dropping to 20th on Lap 168, he recovered and ran as high as third before somewhat fading. Although he isn't remotely in the playoff picture and this was one of his last two chances to win, he still has a lot to hang his hat on.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
June 28, 2025
Kyle Larson has never won a drafting track race in his NASCAR Cup Series career, nor did he win at Atlanta in the years it was a regular intermediate track. It seems likely that he will win a drafting race at some point, but tonight will probably not be that race. Although he starts 11th (ahead of all but two non-Fords), it's unlikely that Larson will be able to keep up with the dominant Ford speed in an era when the Penske cars seem to dominate every drafting race. Although Larson crashed out of five of his first six Atlanta races in the Next Gen/drafting track era, he did finish third in the February race and was in the fight for the win. Ultimately, he's probably not a good enough drafter to seriously threaten for the win when the Fords are faster despite this result and since he's unlikely to dominate, he probably qualified too well to start him for DFS.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
June 28, 2025
Although Christopher Bell qualified 28th at Atlanta on Friday, he started even worse in the February race here before winning it via a last-lap pass, so don't discount the idea that he might be able to duplicate that feat. What makes that less likely this time is that his hot streak of three wins in a row in 2025 came off his very strong tail end of 2024, while in recent weeks he has been consistent but not much of a contender. Perhaps Bell's team after the three-in-a-row streak has gone all in on to focus on the playoff races, so the desire to fight for the win won't be there. He still qualified poorly enough that with his usual pace and consistency, you should consider starting him anyway, but he probably isn't quite the best option, especially since he only led a single lap.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
June 28, 2025
Since Brad Keselowski knows he must win to advance to the playoffs and he probably won't have winning speed anywhere but Atlanta or Daytona, he is likely to go all in on both those tracks in a hail-mary attempt to make the playoffs. Starting him is a big risk since he qualified sixth and therefore he stands a strong chance of finishing worse than he qualified, particularly this year when he has badly struggled. However, Keselowski has had a recent uptick in speed with three top-10 finishes in his last five starts, not to mention his Kansas run, where he crashed while running second. Keselowski does have a history of winning drafting races in desperate positions before and he has won twice at Atlanta and finished second with the Next Gen car in 2023 after his former teammate Joey Logano passed him on the last lap. Since he qualified so much better than usual, there's a chance Keselowski could dominate.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
June 28, 2025
Although Chris Buescher has unexpectedly been the fastest qualifier this year, he surprisingly only qualified 13th at Atlanta where his Ford stablemates swept the top eight positions in qualifying. This gives him a bit of upside since he is more consistent than most of the Fords who outqualified him so he is far more likely to obtain Place Differential points. The problems are that he has never finished better than seventh here, he's crashed in four of his last six starts at Atlanta, and he was only a serious contender to win in 2023 (a year he had a lot more top-line speed) and even in that race he only finished 15th. Ultimately, while he'll likely get a solid finish, the fact that he is one of the more risk-averse drivers and doesn't lead much will ultimately sink him and make some of the other Ford drivers who are more likely to dominate more valuable.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
June 28, 2025
Chase Briscoe's win at Pocono last weekend put Alex Bowman on the playoff bubble, which means Bowman might be desperate to make something happen at Atlanta on Saturday to lock himself into the playoffs. The problem is that despite all his Daytona 500 front-row starts, as well as the fact that he was the fastest non-Ford qualifier in this race, Bowman doesn't seem to be a great drafter in races. His ninth-place qualifying run is good, but although he has earned three top-five finishes here (including a fifth-place showing in last week's race), he rarely ever contends and has only led 11 laps (but they did come in his last two starts here). Ultimately, he probably has little value on Saturday since the Fords are so much faster and there are plenty of drivers starting behind him that are better drafters.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
June 28, 2025
Fifth-place Atlanta starter Ryan Preece does not have a good record here, but that doesn't really matter too much when evaluating him since he typically has run better almost everywhere this year than he ever has before. Although Preece has only led three laps and has never finished better than 16th here, he does have a knack for finishing and he's likely to be faster in today's race than he ever has been before, as his career-best qualifying run attests. When considering Ford's speed in general and the fact that Preece battled for the win at Talladega before being disqualified, he could be a threat to dominate and at $6,700 he's much cheaper than the other drivers who could do that. The problems are that he qualified better than he usually finishes and also that he tends to be more consistent than dominant. You probably shouldn't start him, but at least there's a case for doing so.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
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