Hotlanta Hometown Hero

Chase Elliott celebrates his win in Saturday night's Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway. (Photo: Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

Quaker State 400: Chase Elliott captured his first win of 2025 in the Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway (the track formerly known as Atlanta Motor Speedway). Elliott powered past Brad Keselowski in turns 1 and 2 on the last lap with help from teammate Alex Bowman. The win snapped Elliott's 44-race winless streak and locked him into the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. The win was also his second at the Atlanta-area track - another hometown win for the Dawsonville, Georgia native.

The race electric from green flag to checkered flag. I will admit that I was originally skeptical of Marcus Smith's idea to revamp Atlanta into a superspeedway-esque race track; I thought it would be a disaster and produce nothing be chaos and piss poor racing. And I will admit I was wrong and this track just keeps getting better and better. It gives old school Daytona vibes with a worn out surface, mechanical grip matters, managing throttle time and runs matter, and of course, all aspects of the driver, crew, and engine matter, too. It's a great combination of the racing we used to love prior to Gen7 and combines it with the best parts of the Gen7 car. I was on edge all night as drivers could knife through field, those falling back could work their way back, and we had significant attrition with several multi-car accidents that took out swaths of cars and some of the strongest cars early in the race. This set up a smaller but intense battle for the win as the race went on, and the last dash to the checkered flag was some of the best racing I have seen in a drafting track in the Gen7 car. It wasn't messy, but it wasn't boring. Multiple drivers duked it out for the lead over the 30-lap run to the checkered flag and it all but looked like Brad Keselowski was enroute to victory until the Hendrick teammates of Bowman and Elliott got hooked up coming to the white flag and Elliott made the power move into turn 1 to steal the lead from Keselowski and set sail to his first win of 2025. This Elliott fan is thrilled with the result, but more importantly this NASCAR fan was ecstatic with this race for all 400 miles.

Next up we head to the Chicago Street track with the Xfinity Series and Cup Series while the Craftsman Truck Series enjoys a three week break in their season. The Xfinity Series will get the action kicked off this weekend on Saturday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. EST on The CW with The Loop 110. The Cup Series caps off what should be an exciting weekend on the streets of Chi-Town with The Grant Park 165 on Sunday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. EST on TNT.

Chicago Street Picks: Trucks = OFF

Xfinity = SVG

Cup = SVG