Bell Scores Bristol Win; NASCAR Cup Playoff Round of 12 Field Set

Sep 13, 2025; Bristol, Tennessee, USA; NASCAR Cup Series driver Christopher Bell (20) wins at Bristol Motor Speedway. | Randy Sartin-Imagn Images

On a wild and crazy night at Bristol Motor Speedway, where Goodyear tires were wearing out left and right, Christopher Bell, who wasn't among the race's dominant drivers, found himself near the front going into the race's final restart with four laps to go.

Race Results: Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol

Bell lined up on the final restart from the third position, the second car on the inside line. He wasn't sure going into the restart, where he wanted to be. But when Brad Keselowski selected the high side, he wasn't left with much choice other than to go with the bottom lane.

"Well, I'll tell you what, I was nervous on the twos. I didn't know if I wanted to be on the bottom or the top, and whenever Brad picked the top didn't really give me an option. I had to pick the bottom," Bell said. "All night long, I don't know, old tires just really, really pushed up in the middle of the corners, so I was hoping that those guys on old tires would push up..."

As Carson Hocevar and Zane Smith battled for the lead into Turn 1 on older tires, they did indeed slide up the track, which paved the way for Bell on the inside, who would take the race lead.

After a fevered battle with Brad Keselowski over the final couple of laps of the race, Bell was able to endure a massive bump-and-run attempt from Keselowski in Turns 3 and 4 of the final lap to take his fourth win of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season behind the wheel of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry XSE.

"It wasn't pretty there at the end, but we got her done. Most importantly, this week has obviously been a very tough week, and there's a lot on our mind. This one is for Charlie," Bell said in reference to conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, who was killed at the age of 31 in a shooting at Utah Valley University, while conducting an event at the campus on Wednesday, September 10.

The win by Bell marks the third consecutive race win for Joe Gibbs Racing, which swept the three race wins in the Round of 16 of the Playoffs with Chase Briscoe, Denny Hamlin, and now Bell.

For Bell, the win put an end to a 24-race winless skid, which followed a three-race winning streak earlier in the season. And more importantly, the win came a week after Bell blew up on his No. 20 team on the cooldown lap at World Wide Technology Raceway after they allowed a potential win slip through their fingers.

"We just know that any week, any given week, it could be us, and it hadn't been us for a long time. But Bristol, baby, tonight it's us," Bell exclaimed in his post-race interview on the USA Network broadcast.

Zane Smith held on for a solid third-place finish on older tires at the finish of Saturday night's race, while Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Corey Heim, Carson Hocevar, Alex Bowman, Chase Briscoe, and Ty Gibbs rounded out the top-10 finishers in the race.

Gibbs, who led a race-high 201 laps, had trouble getting to pit road on a late-race green flag pit sequence that ruined his chances at his first career win.

This post did not age well ...

A wild sequence of events for the No. 54. https://t.co/4P6tciX12q pic.twitter.com/jXszXDN7TT

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) September 14, 2025

But the driver of the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was able to rally back to the lead lap to finish inside the top-10.

With the win, Bell advanced to the Round of 12 of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, officially, on Saturday night. Four drivers weren't as fortunate.

Alex Bowman, who came into the race 35 points below the Playoff cutline, had worked himself into a position to possibly score a walk-off win, which would have eliminated Austin Cindric from the Playoffs, but he couldn't keep his tires from wearing out for as long as others, and on the race's final caution flag, he didn't have an additional set of tires waiting for him on pit road.

Bowman would exit the Playoffs with an eighth-place finish, which put him 10 points short of advancing to the next round.

"Certainly sucks to not transfer, but our back was against the wall coming in here," Bowman explained after the race. "We knew it was going to be a tough thing to do. Yeah, not a terrible day for us, and we'll keep digging."

Cindric looked safe for the majority of the race, but suffered a fire, which took five laps for his team to put out on pit road. As a result, he finished 30th on the night. But Cindric was happy to advance, and was happier about the speed in his No. 2 Team Penske Ford prior to the fire.

"We had a great car tonight, and definitely with the long run speed and being able to keep tires on the car, I'm not sure I would have been able to tell you that was going to be the game to start the day, but just proud of the effort, and well-earned Sunday off for the 2 car," Cindric said. "Looking forward to hitting the Round of 12 hard. I want to keep advancing through. This team is capable of a lot."

In addition to Bowman, Shane van Gisbergen (finished 26th), Austin Dillon (28th), and Josh Berry (39th) also failed to advance to the Round of 12.

For Berry, the 39th-place finish came after a massive fire, similar to the one suffered by Cindric, broke out in the right front wheel area of his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford on Lap 76 of the race. Unfortunately, Berry had speed in all three races in the Round of 16, but walked out of each race with last-place finishes.

Denny Hamlin, who finished 31st after a right front tire detached from his car in Saturday night's race, will enter the Round of 12 of the Playoffs as the No. 1 seed, and he'll sit 26 points above the cutline. However, Hamlin will be without two pit crew members for the next two races due to the detached wheel.

The bottom four drivers in the Playoffs heading into the Round of 12 opener next weekend are Austin Cindric (-1 point), Ross Chastain (-2), Joey Logano (-2), Tyler Reddick (-3).

Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Mobil 1 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sunday, September 21. That race will be televised on USA Network, and television coverage for the race will begin at 2:00 PM ET. The Performance Racing Network (PRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast for the event.