The inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge got off to a bang early in Saturday night’s race at EchoPark Speedway — formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway.
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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 29th vs. Bell) and Carson Hocevar (seeded 26th vs. Blaney) — will now advance to Round 2 next week in the Chicago Street Race.
