AUSTIN, Texas — Christopher Bell is making the most of his late-race chances to seize victories in NASCAR Cup Series competition.
Bell passed Kyle Busch with five laps to go, then held off Daytona 500 winner William Byron to win the first road course race of the season Sunday at Circuit of the Americas.
The late-race drama produced Bell’s second consecutive victory after his three-wide overtime win at Atlanta Motor Speedway a week earlier. That followed Hendrick’s victory at Daytona International Speedway to open the regular season.
Sunday in Texas, after Bell cleared Busch, the 30-year-old Oklahoma native had to make a desperate bid to keep his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in front of the hard-charging Byron’s Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet and Tyler Reddick’s 23XI Racing Toyota.
Bell raced to the 11th victory of his Cup Series career and is a multiple race winner for the fourth consecutive season. Busch, who led 43 of 95 laps on the 3.41-mile, 17-turn course in his Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, faded to fifth as the two-time Cup Series champion’s winless streak stretched to 60 races dating to 2023.
“These road courses races are just so much fun,” Bell said. “(Busch) was doing such a good job running his race. He bobbled and allowed me to get out front. When he did, I just said, ‘Don’t beat yourself.'”
The furious nip-and-tuck finish could have ended in a crash that ruined someone’s race and jumbled the field with a late caution flag. Busch and Bell have a heated history of collisions in Austin, notably last year when Busch confronted the younger driver regarding contact in a race where Bell finished second.
This time, everyone kept it clean all the way to the end.
“Amazing to have such respectful clean, hard racing. It was a beautiful way to end a race,” Bell said.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t being pushed hard by Byron — who had his own battle with Reddick, the 2024 regular-season champion who was looking for an opening to attack the front.
“I couldn’t never get beside (Bell),” Byron said. “We’ve always raced well together; I didn’t want to move him blatantly.”
Bell’s driving even drew a compliment from Busch.
“I’ll give Christopher credit,” Busch said. “He ran me really hard.”
Bell’s crew chief, Adam Stevens, said the consecutive wins on a superspeedway oval and a road course show the team can fight for the checkered flag every week, including the next two Sundays at Phoenix Raceway (a 1-mile oval where the regular-season finale to decide the Cup Series champion) and Las Vegas Motor Speedway (a 1.5-mile oval that also hosts a playoff race in the fall)
“We don’t think there’s a track that we go to that we don’t have a a chance to win,” Stevens said. “We have everything we need to win every single weekend.”
AP photo by Stephen Spillman / Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell (20) follows Hendrick Motorsports driver Alex Bowman (48) during Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas.Hendrick driver Chase Elliott started third but quickly dropped to the back when he got spun by Ross Chastain’s Trackhouse Racing Chevy in the first turn. Elliott fought his way back through the field to fourth.
Elliott, the 2020 Cup Series champion, leads active drivers with seven Cup Series victories on road courses, but he hasn’t snared one of those since 2021, when he won two of them. He also has never won a road course or a street race with a Next Gen car, which was introduced in 2022.
Elliott made up 17 positions in the final stage but was still upset about his possible win being snuffed out by the early bump from Chastain.
“It was the first lap of the dang race,” Elliott said. “Who knows. I would have loved to have been in the mix. Easy to say when you’ve had a bad day.”
Connor Zilisch had a wild day in his Cup Series debut for Trackhouse a day after winning the second-tier Xfinity Series race on the same track from the pole position. The 18-year-old started 14th Sunday and dropped back with contact in the first lap, then eventually recovered to get back within the top 15 by the start of the third stage.
That’s when his day ended. Zilisch couldn’t avoid a spin by teammate Daniel Suarez on the 50th lap, smashed into the wall, then had to scramble out of his car when it caught fire.
“You did amazing buddy,” crew chief Darian Grubb told Zilisch on the team radio. “You did nothing wrong today. You did an incredible job driving way up through there.”
Zilisch is a development driver for Trackhouse, which has not announced when he will race in the Cup Series again.
“Hopefully, I’ll get another chance to do this again,” he said. “I had an absolute blast driving through the field.”
NASCAR still has to decide if it will return to Austin in 2026. The track has proven popular over the years with NASCAR drivers, but it has hosted an annual Formula 1 race since 2012 and MotoGP event since 2013. Speedway Motorsports rents the facility for race week, and track president Bobby Epstein has said he’d like to continue the partnership.
“We’ll take a look at ticket renewals, feedback from the fans who attended the race and the overall results before we talk with NASCAR about next year’s schedule,” said Mike Burch, chief operating officer for Speedway Motorsports. “One of the biggest factors will be how the drivers compete on the new National Course, a move we made to put more action and laps in front of the fans.”
Burch was referring to a shorter, tighter layout than in past years. The design used Sunday sliced about a mile off the track distance and took out most of COTA’s long straightaway. It also cuts about a minute off lap times, which allowed the race to be extended from 68 laps to 95.