Chase Elliott Stoked After Energizing Crowd With Wild Atlanta Win
Elliott wasn't the only one excited.
Having grown up and still living 85 miles from the track, Elliott remains NASCAR's most popular driver and one of Georgia's favorite sons when it comes to athletes.
That was most evident in the roar of the crowd as they cheered his triumph.
"To see them that excited after the race for me was just crazy," Elliott said. "It was surreal. I don't really know how else to describe it. It's just one of those moments you wish you could bottle up and relive it."
Elliott hasn't had much of a chance to experience victory celebrations in recent years.
The 2020 Cup champion snapped a 44-race winless streak with the win. Not only had he not won a race this year, he had not even won a stage. In his previous 99 starts, Elliott had managed just one victory.
So while he had five top fives and nine top 10s in 17 races coming into Sunday night, Elliott's solid-but-no-trophy season had the vibe of more pretender than contender.
The victory Saturday night maybe changed all that. He won a wild race where only 21 drivers finished on the lead lap and 12 of the 40 cars were eliminated by accidents.
The racing at Atlanta, a 1.54-mile high-banked track, is supposed to be the same style as Daytona and Talladega. But drivers could often make runs even without help. Now when they had help, the run was virtually unstoppable.
The runs at the end were furious, and one of the best in this style of racing, Brad Keselowski, was out front in the final laps. But Elliott, with the help of a push from Hendrick teammate Alex Bowman, got out front and then Keselowski had no help as Bowman certainly wasn't going to push Keselowski past his teammate.
"All the cards fell on the right places there those last couple laps," Elliott said. "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."Elliott probably wouldn't have won without the push he could rely on from a teammate such as Bowman.
"I didn't really have a choice there on the last lap of what I was going to do," Bowman said. "There wasn't an opportunity for me to win the race, unfortunately. The way the race would shuffle the leader out every handful of laps, I just led too early there. ... I just got the timing wrong and didn't maintain control the race."
For Bowman, having Elliott win the race was better than the other drivers, as Bowman is on the bubble to make the playoffs on points. Elliott was a winless driver but seemed to be in a comfortable position as far as points.
But the rest of the drivers jockeying for the win — Brad Keselowski was second, followed by Bowman, Tyler Reddick, Erik Jones, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Zane Smith — could have impacted Bowman's hopes to make the playoffs.
"I didn't think about that, but you're not wrong," Bowman said about Elliott's win being good for him personally. "Obviously, it's a team of us [Hendrick drivers] out here, so having a Hendrick car in victory lane is always a good thing.
Obviously, it was a good thing for Elliott, who could take pride in winning the wild race but as he noted, he will take wins any way he can get them.
"Just to win a race is nice in general," Elliott said. I'm not going to get picky with whether it's wild or boring. It was nice to come out on the good of that. It could have been one of five or six of us at the end.
"For me, fortunately, the runs just really timed up at the perfect time, and we were able to do something with them."
Elliott has had up-and-down results at Atlanta, with only one top-10 finish in his four starts since a win in July 2022. He has not run well when he has sported a paint scheme designed by a patient of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta as part of a fund-raising program by his foundation.
So that just made a special night extra special.
It was a special night in the making over the last couple of months. A bad pit stop at Kansas ruined his chance in that race in early May. In the previous two weeks, he finished third at Mexico City and fifth at Pocono, where he showed more speed.
Elliott doesn't get so absorbed in the results as much as the process and the way they race, regardless of what happens with the results.
"Were we relevant? Did we actually a shot? I believe in this sport, if you're doing all those right things, that's something to be proud of," Elliott said. "And if you're doing them regularly, you're going to get your turn. The last three or four weeks have been an example of that."
And how will Elliott celebrate in the wee hours of Sunday morning after he satisfied his media obligations? He planned to drive himself home.
"It's not that far," said Elliott, who should be able to make the trip in about two hours. "I'm going to sleep in my bed."
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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How would dropping one of their events go over? Could you have them promote a replacement at Watkins Glen, and avoid putting the promotion of yet another race on Penske's plate? Of course, Miles said 11 months ago that there was 'no (expletive) way' IndyCar was going back to Watkins Glen … then again, he said that sitting in an RV in the infield of the Milwaukee Mile, a track the series was returning to for the first time in nearly a decade. Looking at The Glen's calendar, though, with an IMSA weekend in late June and the expectation of a NASCAR one in August, that could be a tough needle to thread and ensure you could draw a proper crowd, something IndyCar struggled to do when it last visited as a last-minute fill-in for the much-maligned Boston street race for Labor Day weekend races in 2016-17. 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Barring the addition of a new race the first weekend of May, the Sonsio Grand Prix (May 9) appears slated to kick off a several-week stretch of the paddock competing at the track, and without a Month of May precursor like Barber for next year, Penske Entertainment could look to tack on a pair of consecutive races immediately following the 500, as it's done before. We already know the Detroit Grand Prix will run May 31, but the ability to sneak the series' World Wide Technology Raceway date in before the start of the World Cup would seem wise (June 7) before the prospect of an off weekend as the World Cup kicks off, and then a trip to Road America. Precisely which weekend Mid-Ohio will fall is unclear. From April: 4 questions about 2026 IndyCar schedule begging for answers Therein lies the IndyCar 2026 scheduling jigsaw puzzle at play, a chess board that could seemingly offer as many as four new venues, with at least one more shortly on the way. Below is what a 2026 IndyCar schedule could look like, based off of intel from multiple paddock sources as well as well-informed presumptions. Race dates that have been formally confirmed by the series (or from IMSA's 2026 schedule) are in bold: March 1: Streets of St. Pete March 15: Streets of Arlington April 12: Barber Motorsports Park April 19: Streets of Long Beach April 26: Richmond Raceway May 9: IMS road course May 24: Indianapolis 500 May 31: Streets of Detroit June 7: World Wide Technology Raceway June 21: Road America July 5: Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course July 19: WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca July 26: Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez (Mexico City) Aug. 9: Portland International Raceway Aug. 16: Streets of Toronto Aug. 30: Milwaukee Mile Sept. 6: Nashville Superspeedway
