Some races are worth waiting for.
Sunday night’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway didn’t finally end until just before 2 a.m. Monday morning thanks to a rain delay that lasted more than three hours.
Anyone who managed to stay awake was rewarded with exactly what Atlanta has become famous for: organized chaos disguised as stock car racing.
Ryan Blaney emerged from the madness by just 0.068 seconds over Carson Hocevar in a breathtaking three-wide overtime finish that also included Bubba Wallace. It was another Atlanta photo finish that somehow managed to outdo the last one.
The victory looked dominant on paper. It was anything but easy.
Blaney started from the pole, led a race-high 171 laps, swept both stages and became the first driver to lead that many laps on a drafting track since Richard Petty led 184 laps in the 1964 Daytona 500.
Those numbers suggest a Sunday stroll.
Reality looked more like surviving a bar fight while balancing on roller skates.
Nearly every lap featured somebody trying to shove Blaney out of the way. His advantage was rarely more than a car length as the Team Penske driver spent the night defending challenges that were often two and three lanes wide. Late in the race he even scraped the outside wall after contact with Wallace, then had to fend off Hocevar, the driver whose aggressive style has earned him the nickname “The Hurricane.”
Until lap 46, Stage 1 belonged entirely to Team Penske as Blaney led Joey Logano and Austin Cindric around the 1.54-mile speedway.
Then Tyler Reddick arrived.
After admitting a qualifying bobble left him starting 31st, Reddick carved through the field with surgical precision. Following a spirited battle with Kyle Larson, Reddick split the Penske trio, took third from Cindric on lap 49, grabbed second a lap later and closed on Blaney before lapped traffic helped preserve Blaney’s Stage 1 victory.
Reddick’s charge earned him the lead off pit road to begin Stage 2, but Atlanta quickly returned to its regularly scheduled insanity.
Austin Dillon briefly appeared near the front. Hocevar suddenly took the lead. Larson challenged Blaney side-by-side. Christopher Bell joined the fight.
Then Mother Nature decided she wanted some television time, too.
On lap 108, lightning in the area brought out the caution. Moments later the field was parked on pit road before heavy rain arrived, turning the race into an impromptu late-night camping trip.
Three hours later, after crews finally completed pit stops that should have happened before midnight, racing resumed.
Blaney immediately went back to doing what he’d done all evening: leading.
He completed the Stage 2 sweep while Wallace’s night took a detour through the frontstretch grass after a blocking attempt on Ty Gibbs went spectacularly wrong. Wallace kept the car alive but dropped to 31st.
Fuel strategy shuffled the deck to begin the final stage.
Gibbs inherited the lead while Blaney restarted 16th after taking four tires. It didn’t matter.
By lap 200, Blaney was back in front.
The final 60 laps resembled rush-hour traffic where everyone had collectively decided lane markings were merely polite suggestions. The top 20 cars spent lap after lap separated by less than two seconds while racing three and sometimes four wide.
Then the cautions finally arrived.
AJ Allmendinger first spun by himself, then later lost a tire that triggered another yellow. During that caution, Wallace drifted up in front of Blaney, sending the eventual winner into the outside wall. Blaney reported a vibration but refused to surrender.
With 19 laps remaining, Larson was turned exiting Turn 4 and shot through the frontstretch grass. The leaders stayed on track, gambling that fresh tires wouldn’t matter as much as track position.
When the green returned with 14 laps remaining, Hocevar grabbed the lead before Blaney fought back with nine laps to go.
Then Atlanta remembered it hadn’t quite reached maximum chaos.
With five laps remaining, Larson crashed again, this time collecting Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, Austin Dillon, Riley Herbst and Alex Bowman in a massive pileup that guaranteed overtime.
The restart delivered exactly what everyone expected.
Pandemonium.
Hocevar briefly surged ahead before Christopher Bell shoved Blaney forward. Wallace charged underneath. Coming off Turn 4, the three leaders were perfectly aligned across the track, each with a legitimate shot at victory.
Blaney found just enough momentum in the outside lane to edge ahead at the checkered flag.
The drama wasn’t over.
NASCAR penalized Wallace for advancing his position below the yellow line on the final lap, dropping him from third to 29th. Bell inherited second, Hocevar was credited with third, while Ty Gibbs and Erik Jones completed the top five.
For Blaney, the numbers only told part of the story.
“It was definitely, honestly, a pretty awesome night,” Blaney said. “Having a really fast car, sitting on the pole, winning both stages and leading a ton of laps… you never know how these things are gonna end. These guys brought a rocket ship, and it was nice that we were able to close it out.”
The Team Penske driver said the performance was about as complete as a team could hope for.
“You can’t ask for a better weekend,” Blaney said. “Sit on the pole, sweep the stages, win the race. That’s a dream weekend right there.”
Hocevar, meanwhile, was left to wonder what might have been after charging back from an early flat tire to nearly steal the victory.
“It was fun. I’m happy for Ryan,” Hocevar said. “I just didn’t quite have enough help there at the end. Once I got a big lead, I needed them to stay three-wide and I think I would have just run away. They got cleared and it was just too big of a run to throw a block. We got three-wide there and I just needed a little help.”
Road course ace Shane van Gisbergen recorded a career-best sixth-place Cup Series finish. Austin Dillon was seventh, followed by Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano and Chris Buescher.
Next weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series heads to North Wilkesboro Speedway, where the sport will hold its first points-paying race at the historic short track since 1996.
RACE RESULTS
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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