Christopher Bell scored his eighth win of the NASCAR Xfinity Series season in Saturday night’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 at Texas Motor Speedway to lock himself into the Championship 4.
Bell now sets his sights on the title race in two weeks at Homestead-Miami Speedway after leading 101 laps and winning both stages for his 16th career win.
“That’s pretty special to win here at Texas,” said Bell, a native off Norman, Oklahoma.
“I can’t wait to get to Phoenix. I love that race track and now I get to focus on one thing, and that is winning the race. I don’t know if Jason (Ratcliff, crew chief) was thinking points tonight, but we are definitely not going to have to think points next week.”
Bell’s eight wins are his most in a single season and his career victory total through 72 starts is tied for the most with Sam Ard and Jack Ingram.
Ross Chastain led 29 laps and finished second for his second top five, and fifth top 10, in his 19th start this season.
Austin Cindric finished third and has now placed in the top-three in four of the five playoff races.
“We had a fast enough Discount Tire Ford Mustang to win the race, no doubt,” Cindric said. “Given the right track position we could have done it. We had great execution all day. Wish we hadn’t gotten unlucky on some of those restarts and maybe been on the front row for a couple of those final restarts.”
Brandon Jones, who won the last race at Kansas, was fourth with John Hunter Nemechek rounding out the top five.
Justin Allgaier, who had to start at the rear due to an engine change, extended his top-10 streak to 15 races with a sixth-place finish. He now sits fourth in the Playoff standings, 18 points above the cutoff.
Harrison Burton, Cole Custer, Jeb Burton and Ryan Sieg completed the top 10.
Tyler Reddick is now 36 points above the cutoff after a 29th-place finish when he made hard contact with the inside backstretch wall on Lap 162.
“I just got a little bit too aggressive and ended up ruining our night,” said Reddick, who led 32 laps. “I was trying to go for it and it didn’t work out. To have this fast of a car and not be able to win is a big miss on my part.”
Chase Brisoce had a right front-tire go down on Lap 175 after restarting seventh four laps earlier.
“That was just unfortunate,” Briscoe said. “We were in really good contention to do that and then I made a mistake running the top and tried to get too much. We thought all our tires looked good but we had a rub and the tire went flat and put us three laps down.”
Custer is 52 points ahead of the cutoff heading to ISM Raceway in Phoenix next weekend. Briscoe (-18), Michael Annett (-28), Cindric (-31) and Noah Gragson (-47) are the four drivers below the cutline.
“Obviously we have our backs against the wall going into next week but we have really good fast race cars,” Briscoe said. “We will go there and try to win the race.”
