Christopher Bell Triumphs in Atlanta Motor Speedway Thriller
In what ended up being another superspeedway event dominated by Ford Performance, Christopher Bell, driving a Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, found his way to Victory Lane in Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
After starting outside the top 30 and failing to accrue a single stage point, the Norman, Oklahoma-native found himself at the head of the field when it mattered most, leading only a single lap on the way to his tenth victory in the NASCAR Cup Series.
While it was a strong restart and a frontstretch move coming to the white flag that propelled the No. 20 DeWalt Tools Toyota Camry XSE alongside Kyle Larson, a common dirt racing foe, on the final lap of the race, Bell may have been saved by the timing of a last-lap caution.
RELATED: Ambetter Health 400 Results
As the field travelled down the backstretch for the final time, Carson Hocevar managed to shoot the gap between Larson (on the inside) and Bell (on the outside) to provide an exact carbon copy of last season’s three-wide run to the finish between.
However, moments before the second-year pilot of the Spire Motorsports No. 77 surged into the race-lead, NASCAR officials threw the caution flag, as Josh Berry, Justin Haley, and Ryan Preece all wrecked on the backstretch in front of the oncoming pack.
That caution, being on the final lap of the race, ultimately provided Bell the victory – being ahead of Hocevar and Larson at the exact moment of caution.
“I’ll tell you what, that right there is what you dream of, to be able to restart on the first or second row in a green-white-checkered in a speedway,” said Christopher Bell post-race. “You never know how those things are going to play out, but I’ll be the first to tell you, I love superspeedways.”
Carson Hocevar, the second-year driver out of the Spire Motorsports stable, managed to record a career-best result on Sunday, coming home in the runner-up position. Although, the 22-year-old didn’t make many friends, with his aggressive demeanor on the racetrack throughout the event.
Kyle Larson finally broke of six-race streak of Atlanta events where he had been involved in an accident, coming home in the third position. Ryan Blaney, after getting spun around late in the going, rebounded for a fourth-place finish.
Denny Hamlin avenged his poor qualifying result for a sixth-place finish on the afternoon, while Kyle Busch, Ross Chastain, Bubba Wallace, and John Hunter Nemechek rounded out the top 10 finishers from the second of six superspeedway events in 2025.
Joey Logano, who led a race-high 83 laps on the afternoon, brought home a 12th-place result, after the No. 22 Ford Mustang Dark Horse got shuffled to the middle of the lead draft during the middle portion of the final stage, and couldn’t ever make the ground up.
Team Penske once again had a stranglehold on the NASCAR Cup Series field at Atlanta Motor Speedway, with the team’s three entries – and its defacto fourth entry of Wood Brothers Racing – combining to lead 187 of the race’s 266 laps.
After being in position to secure the victory in the race’s closing laps, Austin Cindric came up short when an aggressive slide job from Kyle Larson put the No. 2 into the outside wall and caused him and DAYTONA 500 winner William Byron to crash into the inside wall.
Berry was also collected in a late wreck, which left him to finish 25th.
The race featured a track-record 50 lead changes on the afternoon, and also featured a total of 11 caution flags, only a couple of which were for vicious multi-car wrecks.
Just prior to the end of Stage 2, Chase Elliott smacked the outside wall in Turn 4 and broke a right-rear toe link, which caused him to veer into traffic and collect Corey LaJoie and Brad Keselowski.
At Lap 185, last Spring’s Atlanta winner Daniel Suarez made contact with Ty Gibbs who turned the No. 99 in front of the pack and collected Cole Custer, Cody Ware, JJ Yeley, Zane Smith, and Noah Gragson. Several caution flags also included smaller wrecks, for drivers like Ty Dillon (Lap 83), Erik Jones (Lap 103), Ryan Blaney (Lap 235), Chris Buescher, and Alex Bowman (Lap 206).
Leaving Atlanta, Ryan Blaney holds the NASCAR Cup Series points lead, with a 12-point advantage over DAYTONA 500 winner William Byron. Tyler Reddick, Austin Cindric, and Bubba Wallace round out the top-five.
Now, after two weeks of superspeedway racing, the series will head to Circuit of The Americas (COTA) for the first road course event of the season. Coverage of the event will take place on Sunday, March 1 at 3:30 PM ET on FOX, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
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Joseph Srigley covers NASCAR for TobyChristie.com, Racing America, and OnSI, and is the owner of the #SrigleyStats brand. With a higher education in the subjects of business, mathematics, and data analytics, Joseph is able to fully understand the inner workings of the sport through multiple points of perspective.