Rain and lightning turned the Quaker State 400 into a near six-hour ordeal, but Ryan Blaney still had the muscle to win it. The Team Penske driver led 171 of 263 laps at EchoPark Speedway and then survived a three-wide dash to the line in overtime, holding off Christopher Bell by 0.068 seconds in a race that did not finish until the early hours of Monday morning.
Storms halted proceedings for more than three hours with 108 laps complete, forcing NASCAR to dry the 1.54-mile Atlanta oval under the lights. When the race restarted, Blaney's grip on it did not loosen. His total of 171 laps led was the most at a drafting track since Richard Petty paced 184 in the 1964 Daytona 500 — a measure of how far in front the No. 12 Ford ran on a circuit where staying at the point is notoriously hard.
The finish, though, came down to inches and to the etiquette of the draft. Blaney needed a shove on the final restart and got one from Bubba Wallace, then had to fend off Bell through the closing corners.
"Bubba gave me really good shoves on the restart. We got hooked up really good," Blaney said. He was quick to acknowledge the driver who hounded him to the flag: "I really have to shout out Christopher Bell for being right on my bumper all the way through Turns 3 and 4."
It was Blaney's 19th career Cup victory and his second of the season. Bell took second, with Carson Hocevar — who led at the white flag before being swallowed up on the run to the line — holding third ahead of Ty Gibbs and Erik Jones.
The late drama reshuffled the order behind them. Shane van Gisbergen crossed the line seventh but was promoted to sixth after Wallace was penalised for dropping below the yellow line on the final lap, a call that dropped the No. 23 Toyota to 29th in the results. Wallace did not dispute it afterwards. "A penalty is a penalty," he said.
For van Gisbergen, a clean run to sixth on a superspeedway — a discipline still relatively new to the New Zealander — counted as a strong day at exactly the right time.
"I'm still replaying it in my head, but we'll take a sixth-place finish. We needed a great points day," van Gisbergen said. "Overall, it was an excellent day for this No. 97 SuperFile Chevrolet team. We were up front for most of the race. We didn't get many stage points, but we got some. We'll take that and move onto next weekend."
The victory lifted Blaney to within striking distance of the regular-season standings lead as the Cup Series enters its final stretch before the playoffs, with a handful of races left to lock in seedings. For a driver who has built his reputation on drafting-track craft, leading nearly two-thirds of the laps and then winning the shootout was the complete afternoon — even if it stretched into the middle of the night.
---
*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/blaney-wins-atlanta-overtime-thriller-as-van-gisbergen-bags-sixth). Visit for full coverage.*