NASCAR In-Season Tournament: Massive Upsets After Both Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney Crash Out at Atlanta

The inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge got off to a bang early in Saturday night’s race at EchoPark Speedway — formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway.

And once cars stopped spinning or hitting each other or the wall, two of the biggest names in the 32-driver field — Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney — were quickly eliminated.

Similar to college basketball’s March Madness, NASCAR’s In-Season Challenge is a single-elimination tournament. In other words, if you fail to beat your opponent in each of the five-race rounds — or like Bell and Blaney, you wreck out — you will fail to advance in the tournament’s subsequent four rounds after Atlanta.

At fourth (Bell) and seventh (Blaney), the two drivers were among the top seeds heading into the tournament. Now, after being involved in a multi-car wreck with three laps remaining in Stage 1 on Saturday, they’re one and done. So much for either of them winning the $1 million Challenge winner’s prize.

“As usual for this year, got caught up in someone else’s mess,” Blaney said. “I got to the apron and there was really nowhere else for me to go but the apron. I tried to get there and get clear of it, but they kind of came down and got me in the right-rear and I ended up in the fence. There was no missing that one.”

The two drivers that benefitted from Bell’s and Blaney’s misfortune. With their respective eliminations, their first round opponents — Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (seeded 29^th vs. Bell) and Carson Hocevar (seeded 26^th vs. Blaney) — will now advance to Round 2 next week in the Chicago Street Race.

Post Edited By: Abhishek Ramesh

Atlanta Motor Speedway Christopher Bell NASCAR In-Season Challenge Ryan Blaney

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Jerry Bonkowski

Jerry Bonkowski is a veteran sportswriter who has worked full-time for many of the top media outlets in the world, including USA Today (15 years), ESPN.com (4+ years), Yahoo Sports (4 1/2 years), NBCSports.com (8 years) and others. He has covered virtually every major professional and collegiate sport there is, including the Chicago Bulls' six NBA championships (including heavy focus on Michael Jordan), the Chicago Bears Super Bowl XX-winning season, the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs World Series championships, two of the Chicago Blackhawks' NHL titles, Tiger Woods' PGA Tour debut, as well as many years of beat coverage of the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA for USA Today. But Jerry's most notable achievement has been covering motorsports, most notably NASCAR, IndyCar, NHRA drag racing and Formula One. He has had a passion for racing since he started going to watch drag races at the old U.S. 30 Dragstrip (otherwise known as "Where the Great Ones Run!") in Hobart, Indiana. Jerry has covered countless NASCAR, IndyCar and NHRA races and championship battles over the years. He's also the author of a book, "Trading Paint: 101 Great NASCAR Debates", published in 2010 (and he's hoping to soon get started on another book). Away from sports, Jerry was a fully sworn part-time police officer for 20 years, enjoys reading and music (especially "hair bands" from the 1980s and 1990s), as well as playing music on his electric keyboard, driving (fast, of course!), spending time with Cyndee his wife of nearly 40 years, the couple's three adult children and three grandchildren (with more to come!), and his three dogs -- including two German Shepherds and an Olde English Bulldog who thinks he's a German Shepherd.. Jerry still gets the same excitement of seeing his byline today as he did when he started in journalism as a 15-year-old high school student. He is looking forward to writing hundreds, if not thousands, of stories in the future for TheSportsRush.com, as well as interacting with readers.

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