If the NASCAR Cup Series and Bristol were looking for the unpredictability and the chaos to return to the Bristol Night Race, mission accomplished.
Christopher Bell emerged from a late-race restart with new tires to take the lead with four laps to go and win the Bass Pro Shops Night Race on Sept. 13.
Carson Hocevar, Zane Smith and Alex Bowman were caught out on the final caution pit cycle with no new tires to put on their cars, leaving them as sitting ducks with Bell, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and others riding on fresh rubber.
Bell drove under Hocevar and Smith for the lead on the restart, then held off Keselowski to take the win.
The race was dictated by major tire wear, with new tires becoming necessary within 60 laps of a run. The tire wear required Goodyear and NASCAR to give teams an extra set of tires to use in the second half of the race.
Here are the winners and losers from the NASCAR Bristol race:
Winner: Christopher Bell
A viral clip making the rounds on social media early in the week was of Bell airing out his frustration following a seventh-place finish at Gateway.
Bell’s crew chief Adam Stevens told Bell after the checkered flag that the run was “what we needed today” to take the pressure off of the Bristol result.
“We just (expletive) ran seventh with the best car on the track!” Bell snapped back. “Every (expletive) week, it’s the same (expletive)! We’re the last car to pit road! I’m over it!”
There was no such outburst on Sept. 13 at Bristol.
A smiling Bell emerged from his car as a winner after the No. 20 team put Bell into an attacking position on the final restart with new tires.
Bell restarted in fourth surrounded by three cars with older tires, and he dispatched of those drivers by the backstretch to take the lead with four laps to go.
Despite a fairly heavy bump into the final corner by Brad Keselowski, Bell kept the wheel straight and delivered the win for Joe Gibbs Racing.
JGR swept the Round of 16 races and have all the momentum heading into the final seven races of the season.
Bell earned his first win since winning three in a row early in the season, at Atlanta, COTA and Phoenix.
You weren’t alone if you looked at the leaderboard before the final restart and did a double-take at one of the nine cars on the lead lap. Corey Heim, a guaranteed top 10?
Heim drove to sixth in the final four laps on new tires, his first top-10 finish of his Cup Series career.
The Truck Series points leader has driven in four Cup races this season in a fourth 23XI Racing entry, recording two top-15s. For context, rookie Riley Herbst in a full-time 23XI entry has just one top-15 this year.
Berry had one of the worst playoff rounds in recent memory for a playoff driver. After wrecking on Lap 1 at Darlington and crashing out of the Gateway race in the first stage, Berry had an apparent brakes issue in first 100 laps at Bristol.
Whether it was rubber buildup or brakes overuse, a fire broke out inside the right-front wheel well of the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford.
Berry, a Hendersonville native, was done for the day, relegated to a 39th-place finish in a three-race playoff stint to forget.
The No. 21 Ford had been up-and-down for most of the season, with the arrow trending downward throughout the summer. But even the least optimistic observer could not have dreamt three straight last-place finishes.
Bowman fell short of advancing to the next round despite running well for most of the Bristol race.
Had the final 12 laps been run under green, it was likely going to come down to Bowman, Carson Hocevar and Zane Smith for the win given the tire differences. And despite Austin Cindric’s late-race woes, Bowman was staring at a win-to-advance scenario all night long.
But when the caution flew, all three were left without fresh tires and were forced to manage the final four laps under green accordingly.
Any disappointment for Bowman at Bristol has to be based out of the poor results of the first two races in the Round of 16. Bowman finished 31st at Darlington and 26th at Gateway. Barring a win at Bristol, his playoff fate was sealed days ago.
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