AUSTIN, Tex. (March 2, 2025) —Christopher Bell was prophetic.
After winning at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Feb. 23, Bell said 2.4-mile, 17-turn Circuit of Americas was a track he had circled for another potential victory.
Sure enough, after passing Kyle Busch for the lead and staving off defending race winner William Byron over the last five laps at COTA, Bell was a back-to-back winner in the Cup Series for the first time in his career, having claimed victory in Sunday’s EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix.
Bell beat Byron to the finish line by 0.433 seconds, as the reigning Daytona 500 winner raced Bell cleanly over the closing laps. Pole winner Tyler Reddick was third, followed by Chase Elliott, who made a miraculous recovery from a Lap 1 spin in Turn 1 resulting in a broken toe link.
Busch fell to fifth on the final lap after side-to-side contact with Bell’s No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota during the battle for the lead which took all the juice out of Busch’s No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.
The victory was Bell’s first at the Texas road course and the 11th of his career.
“Whenever Kyle was leading, I was just trying to be so cautious,” said Bell, who spun Busch’s car in Turn 1 in the 2024 race. “Obviously, we know what happened last year. I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted to pass him clean. He was just doing such a good job at running his race, and he could get off the corners just good enough that I couldn’t get inside of him.”
“But there I started peeking a nose, and he bobbled and allowed me to get out front. Whenever I did, I’m, like, ‘Okay, just don’t beat yourself.’ Those were about the five or six sloppiest laps I’ve ever run.”
Having pitted two laps earlier than Bell during the final cycle of green-flag stops, Busch, who led a race-high 42 laps, held a 2.6-second margin over Byron and a 4.0-second advantage over Bell on Lap 78 when Denny Hamlin locked his brakes into Turn 6 and knocked Austin Dillon’s Chevrolet into a gravel trap to cause the third and final caution.
Busch took command on the restart on Lap 83, but Bell had superior tires and an arguably superior car. With a run off Turn 20 on Lap 90, Bell had the lead before the cars reached the start/finish line. At the top of the Hill in Turn 1 on Lap 91, Byron followed into second place, and Reddick soon had third.
Busch rued both the inopportune caution and the effect of the tire disparity after the final restart.
“I wish we could have had a little bit more there at the end,” Busch said. “I feel like maybe the two-lap fresher tires the 20 had was the difference… But I also hated to see that yellow that came out.”