Chase Elliott did what Christopher Bell couldn’t, getting around Denny Hamlin coming off turn four of the final lap to win Sunday’s NASCAR Cup playoff race at Kansas Speedway. Hamlin and Bubba Wallace were dueling with each other on that last lap, allowing Elliott to sneak by on the inside just before reaching the finish line first.
Advertisement
Bell, meanwhile, finished right behind runner-up Hamlin, helping give Joe Gibbs Racing a 2-3-4 finish in the event, with Chase Briscoe finishing fourth.
Elliott found a way around Hamlin and Wallace, who were preoccupied with each other so much that they kind of lost focus on what Elliott was doing. But try as much as he could, Bell could not do the same and had to settle for third.
Even though Elliott won Sunday’s race – the halfway point of the 10-race NASCAR Cup playoffs – Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota dominated the event.
Hamlin finished second, followed by his JGR teammates Bell and Chase Briscoe in third and fourth, respectively, while fellow Toyota-powered 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick finished fifth and seventh, as well.
“I honestly don’t know what I could have done,” Bell said after the race. “I’m leaving here feeling pretty satisfied and that was a bummer whenever I lost the lead on the (final) restart (in overtime).
“We caught the wrong timing line, but even looking back at it, it was such a 50-50 call on those restarts of whether you want it to be the inside or the outside, I don’t know what I would do different.
“I thought we left it all on the table and didn’t win today.”
Even though he didn’t win, Bell is still having an outstanding playoff thus far. Sure, he finished a disappointing 32nd in the playoff opener at Darlington, he finished seventh at Gateway, won at Bristol and was sixth last week at Loudon, in addition to his third-place showing Sunday in Kansas.
Beall almost certainly to advance to the round of eight
Bell heads to the final race in the Round of 12, next Sunday’s battle on the Charlotte Roval, the only road course race in the playoffs, being a stout 44 points ahead of the cutoff line.
Unless he finishes last at Charlotte and the four drivers currently below the cutoff line have outstanding races on the Roval, Bell is about as much of a lock to advance to the Round of Eight as New Hampshire winner Ryan Blaney and Kansas winner Chase Elliott, along with Hamlin.
“It certainly (gives him a bit of breathing room),” Bell said of his Kansas finish. It was rewarding to be restarting on that front row and knowing that if I win, I advance. And if I get out of here and don’t win, we’re in a really good spot.
“So I’m proud of our team and we are doing a really good job of controlling what we can control, and getting pretty good finishes out of it.”
