Christopher Bell Completes JGR Clean Sweep of First Playoff Round with Bristol Victory

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

BRISTOL, Tenn. – Christopher Bell gave Joe Gibbs Racing a clean sweep of the first round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs with a win in Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Bell was able to take advantage of a restart with four laps remaining in the slugfest on the half-mile concrete bullring, surpassing Carson Hocevar and Zane Smith with a three-wide pass in Turn 2 and going on to lead the remaining laps to capture his fifth win of the 2025 season and first ever at the Last Great Colosseum.

“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 after climbing from his car victorious.

He added that on the final restart, the nerves were high with the numerous tire issues that plagued the race all night long, but in the end, everything worked out for his team to come out on top.

“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 recounted.

“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, and they did. They did, and I was able to get by or get underneath them.

“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.”

A great restart by Christopher Bell!

He wins at The Last Great Colosseum! pic.twitter.com/NpQ6yhFp6Q

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) September 14, 2025

With the win at Bristol and wins by his JGR teammates Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin in the two previous races in this round of the Playoffs, the Toyota backed team is making a statement early in the postseason.

“Just so excited about the start to the Playoffs,” said team owner Joe Gibbs. “Just appreciate everybody back at our race shop. I talk about that all the time. We’ll hang a banner on Monday and I get a chance to thank them, but it honestly takes everybody to be able to get our cars to the racetrack like this.

“We’ve got fast cars right now. It means a lot.”

Brad Keselowski made a charge after the skirmish on the restart to climb to second-place, but the 2012 Cup Series champion fell just short of being able to break an ever-growing winless streak that dates back to May 2024.

“…The restart, the 77 spun his tires and the 38 cleaned them out and basically just all Chris had to do was turn left. I had a shot at him down here on the last lap and I hit him, but it just didn’t do anything,” said Keselowski.

“I’m just pissed. We did all the right moves and just kind of got screwed on the last restart and it sucks to be that close.”

Smith brought his No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford home in third, cementing his best finish of the season and best since a runner-up result at Nashville a year ago.

Ryan Blaney finished the race in fourth, followed by his Team Penske teammate Joey Logano rounding out the top-five.

Rookie Corey Heim scored the best finish of the night for 23XI Racing with his sixth-place run, while Hocevar would ultimately fall to seventh after having a shot at the win on the final restart.

In a must-win position, Alex Bowman gave his fellow Playoff drivers a scare late in the race as he was in contention to land the Hail Mary and punch his ticket to the next round, but had to settle for a seventh-place finish on the night, ending his postseason run just three races in.

“Honestly, I thought our car, when we had some green flag running was really good. It just cycled really poorly for restarts,” said Bowman.

“So, I would drive off into Turn 1 and just hope to make the corner for whatever reason. It just wouldn’t take off. And then after five laps or so, it would go again and I couldn’t figure it out if it was something that I was doing, not cleaning the tires off enough, but I felt like I was cleaning the tires off too much at some point.

“So, I don’t really know what we lacked there, but just proud of everybody at Hendrick Motorsports for the fight. Obviously had a shot at it if it would’ve gone green to the end, but it didn’t and yeah, the last restart was ugly. But yeah, a good Ally Camaro compared to yesterday.

“Made some gains on it. Still have some gains we need to make.”

The remainder of the top-10 finishers went to two of the other Joe Gibbs Racing drivers in Chase Briscoe and Ty Gibbs.

Gibbs appeared to be the driver to beat for much of the night, leading a race-high 201 laps, but a miscue trying to get to pit road with 66 laps to go sunk the race winning chances for the youngest member of the JGR stable.

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

“The 54 group has just really fought their heart out, and our pit crew and everybody, it’s so tough, and this sport is really tough, so when you get off to a tough start like we did — but I admire the fact that they just keep fighting right now. I think we’re improving as we go,” the elder Gibbs said of the night for his grandson and the No. 54 team.

“I think tonight is an example of that. Last week I thought we had a real solid week in St. Louis.

“Anyway, real progress with the 54. Still got work to do. But I admire that group.

“Sometimes you admire the people the most that are fighting when it’s really, really tough, and right now it’s been tough for the 54.”

The 12 drivers that entered the night above the cut-off line in the Playoffs would be the same dozen to leave Bristol still alive in the postseason.

Along with the JGR trio of Bell, Briscoe, and Hamlin, the other nine drivers to make the cut into the second round of the Playoffs were William Byron, Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott, Bubba Wallace, Austin Cindric, Joey Logano, Ross Chastain, and Tyler Reddick.

Cindric was the last driver to transfer through on points and was in danger of getting bumped out if Bowman would have been able to win, teetering within one point of elimination after Bowman climbed to second in the race and he had to make a trip to pit road due to a fire on his No. 2 Ford.

But in the end, he lived to fight another day with a 30^th place finish on the night.

“It’s not ideal. I had the fire there, and definitely held a lot of smoke, but huge credit to all my guys behind the wall, over the wall, to be prepared for a situation like that and to only lose five laps,” said Cindric of the night in Thunder Valley.

“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.

“Looking forward to hitting the Round of 12 hard. I want to keep advancing through. This team is capable of a lot.”

Bowman, Austin Dillon, Shane van Gisbergen, and Josh Berry would be eliminated from the Playoffs after Saturday night’s race.

The race was slowed for caution on 14 different occasions, 12 for incident, counting 137 laps under the yellow flag – most of which were a result of the excessive tire wear that plagued teams throughout the night.

With Goodyear bringing a softer tire compound, teams and drivers were facing the unknown heading into the weekend as to what kind of race to expect, whether it would be business as usual or a similar race to the spring of 2024 in which tire wear was a major issue throughout the race.

It appeared after practice and qualifying on Friday that it would be the former, but once the sun went down on Saturday night, it shifted dramatically the other way, forcing teams into tire conservation racing for the remainder of the night as tires were cording and marbles making the high lane nearly unusable.

Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Race Results