Chase Elliott wins at Atlanta, grabs 3rd victory of the season (7-10-22)
By: Becca Cottingham Quimby
Headline Photo Courtesy: NASCAR Twitter Page
We head to Atlanta Motor Speedway which has become a mini-super speedway. Chase Elliott will bring us to green due to qualifying being canceled. This will probably equal a competition caution for any needed adjustments as well. The yellow line is in effect for this race as well. We see the battles back and forth between multiple drivers in stage one. Between Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, and even Denny Hamlin. Pit road gets busy with multiple adjustments for drivers. With the pit road being so busy Martin Truex Jr was caught speeding and sent to the rear. Kyle Larson with the hood up for an adjustment. The drivers go back to battling like a superspeedway. The stage one winner is Chase Elliott.
Tyler Reddick will bring us to green for stage two. Martin Truex Jr will go to the bottom with Christopher Bell and they will both pass Tyler Reddick. We get a caution due to an accident on track involving three drivers. We had incidents on pit road where drivers are bumping into one another. We get another big caution that involves nine cars. This will not be the last incident we see in this stage. Then the battle will be on as everyone truly believes they have enough fuel and tires should be good to go. Tyler Reddick has the lead and everyone else wants the lead. Tyler Reddick protects his lead as long as he can until Chase Elliott takes the lead back. Chase Elliott will then have to battle two and three wide drivers to keep his lead through the end of stage two. The stage will end under caution due to Alex Bowman blowing a tire causing Chase Elliott will win stage two under caution.
We will start stage three with an aggressive restart. Drivers know this is the last stage to make any move to get stage points or win this race. Then about twenty laps into stage three we see another decent size wreck. Garrett Smithely gets off the pace and causes Ty Dillion to check up and Kyle Larson to bump into Ty Dillion triggering another wreck. This collects and damages several cars. We get back to green, and things seem to be okay. That is until Christopher Bell loses his car and brings on another caution. We had amazing battles at the front of the track. Ross Chastain gets into the back of Denny Hamlin sending him spinning. This will bring us down to a green, white checkered. The final restart drivers will go three wide trying to make moves to win this race. Corey LaJoie was so close to winning his first race. He pushed and made his move not long after the white flag had flown. Chase Elliott threw the block when he pulled his move and this caused his wreck. Chase Elliott was in the lead at the moment of caution and this will lead to him being the unofficial winner in Atlanta.
