Chase Elliott's Atlanta win takes away chance to earn a playoff spot for some drivers
HAMPTON, Ga. — On a night when opportunity opened for so many drivers outside a playoff spot, hope faded away in the blur of Chase Elliott's car.
And so goes one less chance to make the playoffs for Brad Keselowski, Erik Jones, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Zane Smith.
Nate Ryan,
All entered Saturday night's race at EchoPark Speedway outside a playoff spot. Jones was the closest to the cutline and he was more than one race's worth of points back. While there's a chance those drivers can point their way into the playoffs with eight races left in the regular season, the reality is they need to win.
Saturday night was set to be that chance.
Until it wasn't.
Smith led with eight laps left.
Stenhouse passed him and led with seven laps to go.
Keselowski got by him and led the next five laps.
Chase Elliott passed him for the victory on the final lap.
'Every loss sucks,' Keselowski said after finishing second.
Keselowski is so far back in the points that he needs to win to make the playoffs. But he didn't have much of a chance on that last lap.
Elliott's teammate, Alex Bowman — who entered the night on the playoff cutline — was in third place and gave Elliott a push down the frontstretch as the field took the white flag.
'If he and I did anything but push one another in that situation, we were handing the race to Brad,' Elliott said.
That momentum helped Elliott dive to the inside of Keselowski's car and pass him in Turn 1. Bowman challenged Keselowski for second as Elliott pulled away for the popular win at his home track.
'There's races where you can do things different and there's races where you can't,' Keselowski said.
There was not much he could do going against the two Hendrick Motorsports teammates.
A key moment in the race came when Keselowksi's teammate, Chris Buescher, who had been running second to his boss, lost second to Smith at Lap 237 of the 260-lap race. Buescher then fell to fourth two laps later. He soon fell out of the top five and could not provide Keselowski any help the rest of the race.
Without a teammate, Keselowski was exposed to the big moves that cars could make on the 1.54-mile speedway.
When Smith took the lead, he felt comfortable with the situation only a few miles from a potential first Cup victory.
'I felt like I had a good idea of how it was going to be, controlling the guy in second, how big of a run he was going to get and just trying to stall him out the best I could and pick up help,' Smith said after finishing seventh. 'I just let two guys by.'
Stenhouse made a big move to go three-wide, diving down low to take the lead.
'Just didn't feel like I had enough speed to stay there,' Stenhouse said after placing sixth. 'It was going to take some massive blocks to do that.'
With the big runs, that would have led to a big crash, similar to the 22-car crash that brought out the caution at Lap 70 that eliminated points leader William Byron, pole-sitter Joey Logano, Pocono winner Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin.
Keselowski took control and with two laps to go, he was in good shape. He had Tyler Reddick behind him, followed by Elliott, Stenhouse, Jones, who would finish fifth, and Bowman. That was a Toyota, two Chevrolets, a Toyota and another Chevrolet behind Keselowski's Ford.
Had it stayed that jumbled, Keselowski might have been able to hold off his foes but Bowman went from sixth to third and Elliott went from third to second by the final lap, setting up Elliott's move.
'Honestly,' Elliott said, 'all the cards fell on the right places there those last couple laps.'
And left Keselowski, Jones, Stenhouse and Smith still searching for that victory that gets them into the playoffs.
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