Ryan Blaney prevails after long delay in three-wide NASCAR thriller at Atlanta

HAMPTON, Ga. — NASCAR fans might look at the box score after waking up to see the results from the Cup Series race at Atlanta’s EchoPark Speedway and think they missed nothing.

They’d be wrong.

Ryan Blaney won a thriller at nearly 2 a.m. local time after a long rain delay, capping off one of NASCAR’s best races of the season with a last-corner pass.

Though Blaney led 14 different times and dominated the race with 171 laps led, he needed a push from Christopher Bell off the final turn in overtime to prevail in a three-wide finish over Bubba Wallace and Carson Hocevar.

“Is it 2 a.m.?” Blaney asked a cheering crowd of fans who had stayed until the wee hours of Monday morning. “Past my bedtime. But it’s not past y’all’s.”

The late show was NASCAR’s drafting-style racing at its finest, with cars slicing and dicing while making three- and four-wide moves all night long. It cemented the Atlanta track’s reputation as NASCAR’s most entertaining circuit since it was reconfigured from a typical intermediate into a mini superspeedway in 2022.

Blaney’s 171 laps led were the most at a drafting-style track since Richard Petty in the 1964 Daytona 500 (although there were more laps available on Atlanta’s 1.5-mile track as opposed to Daytona’s 2.5 miles and Talladega’s 2.67 miles).

But at the white flag, it appeared someone else would win the race instead. The exciting young Hocevar, NASCAR’s most polarizing driver, was clear of a three-wide battle behind him. Except Hocevar was too far out, and Blaney caught him with a huge run from Wallace.

Wallace then went three-wide on the bottom, but dipped his tires below the double yellow out-of-bounds line. After Wallace initially finished second, NASCAR penalized the driver for going out of bounds and dropped him to 29th place instead.

“Unfortunate. It’s another race for Bubba Wallace and Company,” Wallace said, referring to the dark cloud which sometimes seems to hang over his No. 23 team.

Wallace, crew chief Charles Denike and 23XI Racing performance director Dave Rogers reviewed video of the finish in the garage on a laptop, then walked into the NASCAR office hauler to meet with officials. The meeting wrapped after 31 minutes, and the penalty stood.

“A penalty is a penalty,” Wallace said.

The redeye finish was due to a summertime Southern thunderstorm that rolled through after the first 108 laps of the race, causing a red flag delay of three hours and nine minutes. Finally, at 12:01 a.m. local time, the race returned back to the green flag with NASCAR announcing the intention to complete the entire race.

When the checkered flag eventually flew after 30 lead changes and seven cautions, it was one of NASCAR’s latest finishes of the last couple decades — 1:45 a.m. on Monday morning.