{"id":34225,"date":"2025-09-14T00:14:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T04:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/sin-categoria\/bell-leads-joe-gibbs-racing-sweep-in-nascar-playoffs\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T00:14:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T04:14:19","slug":"bell-leads-joe-gibbs-racing-sweep-in-nascar-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/nascar\/bell-leads-joe-gibbs-racing-sweep-in-nascar-playoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Bell leads Joe Gibbs Racing sweep in NASCAR Playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher Bell Dominates Bristol, Secures NASCAR Playoffs Victory<\/h2>\n\nIn an exciting night race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Christopher Bell, from the Joe Gibbs Racing team, achieved a crucial victory, thus completing the sweep of the first round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.\n\nBell, leading the last four laps, crossed the finish line with a 0.343-second lead over Brad Keselowski, who was looking to break a 51-race winless streak.\n\nWith this victory, Bell joins his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates, Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe, as winners of the first round, keeping the Toyotas undefeated in the playoffs.\n\nZane Smith secured third place, followed by Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano.\n\nThe race was marked by a record 14 yellow flags and 137 caution laps, due to the difficulties of the drivers and teams in adapting to a new tire that generated excessive wear, requiring more pit stops.\n\nThe playoff drama reached its peak with 40 laps to go, when a fire affected Austin Cindric’s number 2 Ford. Although the team managed to extinguish the flames, Cindric lost several laps in the pits, rejoining the race outside the top 30 and just ahead of Alex Bowman in the fight for the last spot to advance to the second round.\n\nHowever, Bowman, who had managed to recover from a spin on lap 100, needed to win to overtake Cindric. He finished eighth, 10 points short of advancing.\n\nOther eliminated drivers were Austin Dillon (28th), Shane van Gisbergen (26th), and Josh Berry (39th).\n\nTy Gibbs, in search of his first Cup victory, led the most laps (201 of 500), but a mistake on his final pit stop under green flag conditions cost him valuable time aboard his number 54 Toyota.\n\n

Berry Suffers a Shocking Elimination<\/h2>\n\nJosh Berry had a spectacular exit after being the first driver eliminated. With smoke coming out of the cockpit and flames on his front right tire, Berry, who qualified in tenth place and reached third, had to abandon the race.\n\n\n
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\u201cMan, very disappointing,\u201d Berry said. \u201cThat was going to be a lot of fun. We were making progress. It\u2019s been a couple of tough weeks, but it hasn\u2019t been because of performance. We\u2019ve executed well and run well, we just haven\u2019t had the results.\u201d<\/p>\n\nJosh Berry<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\nBerry, whose playoff debut began with a crash in the first round of the Southern 500, finished last in the three races of the first round. “I don’t think you can write three last places the way we’ve gotten them,” he added.\n\n

Bell Expresses Frustration<\/h2>\n\nAlthough generally discreet, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell expressed his frustration with the team and strategy after finishing seventh in the previous race. Bell, who hasn’t won in 24 races and hasn’t achieved a top 5 since July, expressed his discontent at seeing his teammates Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe win the first two playoff races.\n\n\n
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\u201cIf I were consistently leading laps and in a position to win, then I would never be frustrated,\u201d Bell stated. \u201cBut the fact is, I haven\u2019t been in a position to win races, I haven\u2019t led laps. My teammates are leading, it seems, almost every lap, and they\u2019re getting the results. It\u2019s less about winning races and more about being in a position to do well, and we haven\u2019t had that.\u201d<\/p>\n\nChristopher Bell<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Next Stop<\/h2>\n\n\nThe second round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs will begin on Sunday, September 21st at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. This will be the first Cup race on the 1.058-mile oval since June 2024 and the first playoff race in Loudon, New Hampshire, since September 2017.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Bell Dominates Bristol, Secures NASCAR Playoffs Victory In an exciting night race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Christopher Bell, from the Joe Gibbs Racing team, achieved a crucial victory, thus completing the sweep of the first round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. Bell, leading the last four laps, crossed the finish line with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[184,8696,182,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-34225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-christopher-bell","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-playoffs"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}