LOUDON, N.H. — Christopher Bell raised a broom over his head and clutched a 24-pound lobster in victory lane, all because he earned his third NASCAR Cup Series win of the year in an outcome that would have been impossible before this season.
Heck, it still looked pretty grim for most of a rainy Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Once the skies cleared, though, NASCAR busted out its latest creation it had saved for a rainy day: wet-weather Goodyear tires that allowed the action to resume and continue all the way to a thrilling end.
Behind the wheel of the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota, Bell mastered the Cup Series’ first race that ended with cars running on rain tires and pulled away after a 2-hour, 15-minute weather delay to beat darkness and the field.
He also swept the weekend at New Hampshire, with his win on the top circuit following Saturday’s win in the second-tier Xfinity Series.
“Hopefully that was entertaining, because it was something different, something new, and nobody knew what to expect and what to do,” Bell said. “The guys that figured it out the quickest were the most successful.”
On Friday, Bell spoiled the impending reveal that Chase Briscoe — currently driving for Stewart-Haas Racing, which will shut down after this season — is joining him at JGR in 2025. Then he ruined Briscoe’s best shot at his first win of the season, holding him off over the final two laps of the overtime finish.
With darkness falling, Bell cruised past Josh Berry and Briscoe and remained the driver to beat at New Hampshire. He has four wins in the Xfinity Series at Loudon and won a Cup Series race at the track for a second time. This time, he won with 86 laps raced on the new tires.
“It was dark. It was very, very dark. That was creeping up in a hurry to being too dark to race,” Bell said. “Certainly there were dry parts on the track, but there were still a lot of wet parts on the track, too. I can’t tell you how far away it was, but in my opinion I didn’t think it was ready for the dry tires yet.”
Bell was used to the wet stuff, having last month’s rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 with 151 laps left in the race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
New Hampshire actually needed four extra laps. Briscoe was second and Berry third as SHR Fords completed the top three. Kyle Larson in a Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet and Chris Buescher in an RFK Racing Ford rounded out the top five.
“I think we could have probably started with the track a little bit wetter,” Briscoe said. “The beginning was pretty fun. We were all over the place. Five wide at times, and slipping and sliding around.”
Even with the start of the race bumped up a half-hour in hopes of avoiding the worst of the weather, New Hampshire was a mess almost from the moment the green flag was dropped. The race was marred by wrecks that wiped some of NASCAR’s biggest stars out of contention — all while the rest of the field tried to remain in contention and beat the looming rain that hovered over the entire weekend.
Tyler Reddick, who won earlier this season at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway, held the lead when the race was red-flagged because of rain with 82 laps left in the scheduled 301-lap race. Fans fled the grandstands, and drivers went back to their motorhomes with seemingly no chance of a return as the gloomy weather worsened.
New Hampshire and NASCAR waited out a tornado watch, nearby lightning strikes and a severe thunderstorm warning before it could resume the race after the long delay. After crew members swept standing water off pit road, the cars all hit the 1.058-mile track on new tires.
NASCAR let teams use wet-weather tires for the only second time in a points race this season. Teams had a maximum of four sets of wet-weather tires to race on the damp oval track. Teams had to take rain tires during pit stops, and their position could not be affected.
With no choice of tire, they were also no match for Bell.
Oh, as for that spoiler about Briscoe’s next employer, NASCAR Hall of Fame team owner Joe Gibbs said all was forgiven.
“Somebody asked me about that in the winner’s circle, and I said, ‘Christopher Bell can do anything he wants,'” Gibbs said with a laugh.
The gloomy conditions were more befitting a former JGR driver now in his second season at Richard Childress Racing as Kyle Busch’s dismal day ended with his Chevy getting towed off the track.
Busch hit the wall running the caution laps to end his race and continue what is shaping up as the worst season of his career. Busch had already tagged the wall just past the halfway point and was running 24th late in the race when he was collected in another wreck. He finished 35th in yet another rough outing this season.
A two-time Cup Series champion with 231 NASCAR national series wins, Busch has yet to win a race this season driving for RCR. Busch raised some eyebrows last week when he suggested he would be open to returning to two of his former Cup Series teams, though he said he remained committed to RCR next season.
The 39-year-old Busch picked up two victories in 2023 to run his Cup Series career total to 63, but now he is on a 39-race winless drought that’s worst losing streak of his career.
Meanwhile, Alex Bowman, winless this season for Hendrick Motorsports, ran into trouble when his No. 48 Chevrolet starting smoking. The hood went up on pit road, and the car was soon pushed to the garage for repairs. He finished 36th.
Team Penske’s Joey Logano locked up the left front tire on the No. 22 Ford off a restart on lap 194 and slammed into Hendrick’s Chase Elliott. JGR’s Martin Truex Jr., last season’s New Hampshire winner, spun and hit the wall after contact with RFK’s Brad Keselowski with 91 laps left.
Bubba Wallace of 23XI Racing was knocked out of the race by SHR’s Noah Gragson after the rain delay.
The Cup Series races next Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon, Tennessee.