Since a reconfiguration prior to the 2022 season, Atlanta Motor Speedway has produced a handful of classic finishes, and this year's spring event almost made it into that category. Unfortunately, the caution flew on the final lap, but even then, the finish was a close one, with Christopher Bell edging out Carson Hocevar and Kyle Larson at the moment of caution by less than a car length.
On a night that featured 15 different leaders (with 50 lead changes among them), eleven of them led more laps than Bell, who led just the final lap in overtime to claim the win.
Bell lurked just behind the leaders on the final restart, pouncing as soon as there was an opening for him. It's Bell's 10th career victory, ninth among active full-time drivers. It's his first win of 2025.
On the other hand...
The biggest surprise of the race might be who wasn't there at the end. Joey Logano, one of two drivers to win twice on the current Atlanta configuration, couldn't keep pace this time around. William Byron is the other and was in contention until he was caught in a late incident.
His Team Penske teammates battled for the win, but Logano just couldn't hang with them in the second half. Austin Cindric and pseudo-teammate Josh Berry of Wood Brothers Racing were swapping the lead in the closing laps until Larson triggered a caution that sent the race into overtime, and Ryan Blaney overcame a spin to finish fourth, but Logano didn't have the trouble they did ... or the speed. It is an odd-numbered year ...
After a second week of turning a spin into a great finish, Blaney leads the driver standings by 12 over Daytona 500 champ Byron. Tyler Reddick, Cindric and Bubba Wallace round out the top five two weeks into the 2025 season.
Byron and Bell lead the playoff standings as the only winners to date.
Thanks to their race wins, Bell and Byron also lead the playoff-point hunt with five apiece. Blaney, Larson, Logano and Berry all have one in the bank.
Taking the biggest hits this week (outside of part-timer Jimmie Johnson) were Chris Buescher and Erik Jones, who entered tied for sixth but fell to 16th and 17th after finishing 30th and 31st, respectively, on Sunday (Feb. 23) after getting caught in the same incident on lap 102.
The biggest factor separating the racing at Atlanta with what fans saw in the Daytona 500 last week was the way drivers could move from the back to the front much more quickly.
Bell wasn't the only driver to make the most out of starting near the back. Runner-up Hocevar started 26th. Other top-10 finishers starting in the back half of the field included fifth-place Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (started 34th), sixth-place Denny Hamlin (started 37th), eighth-place Ross Chastain (started 33rd) and 10th-place John Hunter Nemechek (started 22nd).
But the award for making the most out of a bad day goes to Michael McDowell. An early power steering issue sent him in for repairs, and thanks to some well-timed cautions and six free passes, McDowell was able to drive into the mix in the final stage, finally finishing a solid 13th. Sure, that's a lot of free passes, but McDowell made the most of his circumstances and put himself in the right spot.
It was so close to being the Atlanta surface coming into its own as a unique track. So. Close.
And then it turned back into a typical superspeedway pack race.
NASCAR was right to throw the caution flag on the final lap; Berry took a hard hit in a multicar incident, and unlike at Daytona International Speedway, the field didn't have a mile to slow down after the line, so it was the right call.
While racing for the win is the name of the game and a lot of the blame lies with the aero package that allows the tight packs, the drivers do own a little of it. In the incident that triggered the overtime, Larson was never clear when he walled Cindric, and if he was not cleared by his spotter, he should have held his line until he was. That set up the overtime scramble that set off the last-lap incident.
Bottom line: the race was five laps away from being a classic, but then it became just another superspeedway race. That's a shame, because Atlanta has the potential to be so much better than that.
Looking beyond just the week ahead, for the last couple of weeks, fans watching the broadcasts on FOX have been treated to a trio of really excellent commercials -- for the NTT IndyCar Series.
In case you missed them, the ads feature three different stars of the series: Josef Newgarden, Alex Palou and Pato O'Ward, showcasing them to fans in a lighthearted way, highlighting some of their on-track accomplishments as well.
NASCAR needs to be paying attention because they're excellent. NASCAR has seen a bit of an uptick in interest in the last year or two, but it still needs to capitalize and promote the sport and its drivers.
There are plenty of personalities for NASCAR to choose from, with great stories who could be fan favorites if they aren't already. NASCAR shouldn't copy the IndyCar ads, and they shouldn't just promote the already popular drivers like Chase Elliott, but some of the youngsters and newcomers as well, a mix of veterans and future stars.
The sport has gained some decent momentum, and making sure it's promoting both the racing and the drivers can only help. There was a time when between race broadcasts and commercials, fans felt like they knew all of the drivers on an almost personal level. That should be the aim going forward -- promote NASCAR as a sport with athletes fans want to watch and pull for each week.
In the short term, the Cup Series goes west to Austin, Texas and Circuit of the Americas. They'll run the shorter course for the first time (a questionable decision, but the effect it will have on the racing remains to be seen).
Who to watch? Byron is the defending race winner, so he's one to watch along with other past COTA winners Elliott, Chastain and Reddick. With AJ Allmendinger and Shane van Gisbergen also full-time in the Cup Series this year, there will be plenty of competition, especially with a couple of outside road course specialists likely to be in the field.
You can't really compare races on the current Atlanta layout to previous events because the track is much faster and the style of racing is different, so the sample size is relatively small.
Still, it'll be hard to beat the finish from last spring's race, with its three-wide scramble to the line that resulted in Daniel Suarez winning the race by just .003 seconds. It was the closest one-two-three finish ever, with just .007 seconds separating first and third.
Prior to Sunday, the speedway configuration never had a margin of victory wider than .193 seconds, but in six races, three ended under caution after a last-lap incident.
This edition made it four of seven finishing under caution to end what could have been a really memorable race for the right reasons. This one changed the narrative from the track coming into its own after the repave to simply Daytona International Speedway Lite.