MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell entered Sunday’s Round of 8 finale at Martinsville Speedway well aware of the objective: Be quicker than the other guy, and you’ll have a great chance to advance to the NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4.
Larson did exactly that in Sunday’s Xfinity 500, keeping his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet ahead of Bell at both stage breaks and at the checkered, advancing Larson back to the Championship 4 for the third time in the past five seasons by a slim seven-point margin. Bell, on the other hand, was ousted from title contention in the final race of the semifinal round for the second consecutive year.
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The No. 5 team’s advantage began in qualifying on Saturday, when Larson qualified third and Bell 12th. Larson used that track position to his benefit Sunday, finishing third in Stage 1 and second in Stage 2 to earn a combined 17 stage points. Bell wound up eighth in Stage 1 and third in Stage 2 for a total of 11 stage points. What was a one-point deficit for Larson at the green flag was suddenly padded by adding those six extra points, all of which paid dividends late as Larson defended late, ultimately finishing fifth with Bell seventh.
Stoic as always, Larson was unfazed by the task at hand and managed his race to perfection en route to another Championship 4 appearance, joining teammate William Byron and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe.
“It was a little less stressful because I recognized that we were better than Christopher in car performance, and we were just in front of him all night,” Larson said. “I knew when we got a good first stage that it was not gonna be easy, but the math was gonna be much easier. I just had to keep him kind of within my sights at that point.
“Our team just did a great job and we didn’t have any hiccups really. I definitely could have had some better restarts. But like I said, when I had outscored Christopher, I was just playing it a little bit easy and kind of wanted to just tuck in line and go from there. Happy to be in the final four. Really proud of William. That was a hell of a drive. So yeah, we’ve got two Hendrick cars going for a championship, and yeah, hopefully we can do it for Rick (Hendrick, team owner).”
The No. 5 team went through supreme highs and challenging lows this season, beginning by winning three of the first 12 races of the year, then riding a performance slump through the summer earmarked by off-track challenges like personal losses and personnel changes that have left Larson in the midst of a 23-race winless streak, his longest stretch outside Victory Lane since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021.
In each of Larson’s prior four seasons, he said Sunday, he spent the full year believing the No. 5 team was a Championship 4 caliber team. With so much adversity thrown their way this season, that wasn’t the case this year.
“We got so far off in the middle, I was like, we’re gonna have to get really lucky to make the final four,” Larson said. “But we’ve just continued to work really hard. I think most years, we’ve just kind of rode that high, and not necessarily that we’ve tapered off in the playoffs, but I think other teams have been where we were this year and they’ve had to work really hard. And the poor performance that we had throughout the summer just made everybody at the shop work really hard.
“Even when we started the playoffs and were really bad, they just took it a whole ‘nother couple levels of trying to figure out why we’ve struggled. It’s just really satisfying to see that. I didn’t think we could flip that switch in the playoffs, but I think it just proves 10 weeks is a long time.”
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Left to deal with the heartbreak of missing the Championship 4 was Bell, who climbed from his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota knowing his title hopes were ending at the 0.526-mile short track for the second straight year. Simply put, Bell was unable to match Larson’s pace throughout the weekend, particularly in Sunday’s race. Larson averaged a third-best 5.13 running position according to NASCAR Loop Data, while Bell posted a sixth-best average running position of 8.03.
“We just weren’t good enough,” Bell said. “I mean, (whether it was) seven points, one point, it doesn’t really matter. We knew that the goal was that we were gonna have to outrun the 5, and he outran us. That’s all she wrote.”
The yellow flag waved at Lap 398 with Larson running ninth and Bell 10th. Crew chief Adam Stevens opted to bring Bell to pit road for fresh tires while Larson stayed out, the hope being that fresh Goodyear rubber would allow Bell to charge through the field. Larson restarted on the inside of Row 5 with Bell on the outside of Row 6, but while Larson charged forward, Bell said he “was just trapped back there.”
“We kind of got hung on the outside on that restart and actually fell back to 15th or so, and that hurt us,” Stevens told NASCAR.com. “I don’t think it was going to make a difference. At the end of the day, we had to finish five or six spots ahead of them, and even if we had a fantastic restart, I don’t think that was going to happen.”
Bell, a Championship 4 contestant in 2022 and 2023, said he lacked the long-run pace necessary to contend Sunday at Martinsville, the site of his walk-off win in 2022 that propelled him to his first title-race berth. It was also the site of a heart-wrenching ousting last year, when a 27-minute post-race wait was needed to sort out the results, and a last-lap wall ride left Bell out of the title quartet.
MORE: Championship 4 is set after Martinsville
“It feels a lot better than last year, for sure,” Bell said. “I genuinely feel like the four going there are very deserving, and it is what it is. We knew coming in here we were gonna have to outrun the 5, and we didn’t.”
Joining Bell on the championship outskirts are defending series champion Joey Logano, 2023 champ Ryan Blaney and 2020 champion Chase Elliott.
The NASCAR Cup Series championship will be decided at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday, Nov. 2 at 3 p.m. (NBC, Peacock, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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