Christopher Bell wins at Bristol, 4 drivers eliminated from Playoffs

Christopher Bell held off a hard-charging Brad Keselowski to win the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway. It was the fourth win of the season for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver.

“I never in a million years would have thought that my first win at Bristol would have come with a tire fiasco (referring to excessive tire wear) like we had tonight,” Bell said after the race.” said Bell.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, I was nervous on the two (tires),” he continued. “I didn’t know if I wanted to be on the bottom or the top, and whenever Brad picked the top (lane) didn’t really give me an option. I had to pick the bottom. 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 (starting ahead of him) 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.”

Notably, NASCAR supplied the teams with an extra set of tires in the final stage.

After the race, a disappointed Keselowski said, “Just the story of our season, just a 50/50 shot on the restart, and I got the lane that couldn’t launch. Just frustrating. We had a great car, great strategy, put ourselves in position to, if not win, at least have a really, really solid day, and on that last restart,  just rolled the dice and didn’t get anything good.”

Zane Smith finished third, and Ryan Blaney finished fourth for the team’s 12th top-five finish of the season. Along with his seventh stage win of the season in Stage 1 and his second-place finish in Stage 2, it was enough to clinch a spot in the Round of 12.

“It was another one of those things where we thought we knew what the tire was gonna do, and it did something completely different. I guess that’s happened multiple times, and that makes for an exciting race, and trying to figure it out on the fly, and what to expect what to do, and how to strategize and all that stuff. It was a wild night. I wish we wouldn’t have run so many laps under caution. The middle part of that race, two thirds of that race was kind of getting pretty boring, but we were really fast all night. It’s nice to win a stage and good to come home fourth. Overall, I’m really, really proud of the night and the effort. We’ll go on to Loudon next week. I’m looking forward to it.” Blaney said.

Joey Logano rounded out the top five finishers.

“We had to put old tires back on it, so, overall, a top five and two top fives in a row, which at this point of the season we need to be doing that kind of stuff. I’m proud of the team and proud of the execution. I felt like the win was right there in front of us, but just couldn’t quite grab it.” Logano said.

Corey Heim, Carson Hocevar, Alex Bowman, Chase Briscoe, and Ty Gibbs rounded out the top 10.

Ty Gibbs led a race-high 201 laps and was on track to win his first career Cup Series race. However, he missed his pit stall on the last green flag stop and had to settle for a 10th-place finish.  

After Bristol, Denny Hamlin leads the Cup Series standings over William Byron and Kyle Larson by two points.

Four drivers were eliminated from the Playoffs – Austin Dillon, Shane van Gisbergen, Alex Bowman, and Josh Berry.

The race featured 14 caution flags for 137 laps, and 36 lead changes among 14 drivers.

Up Next:

The Cup Series returns to action Sunday, September 21st, to kick off the Round of 12 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (2 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).

Cup Series Playoffs – Advancing to Round of 12

Complete Results:

NASCAR Cup Series Race Number 29
Race Results for the Bass Pro Shops Night Race – Saturday, September 13, 2025
Bristol Motor Speedway – Bristol, TN – 0.533 – Mile Concrete