With two laps to go in the NASCAR Kansas Cup race, Joe Gibbs Racing looked like the team best positioned to leave with the most points. However, Cody Ware's unfortunate spin changed the fate of JGR’s race.

During the restart in overtime, Denny Hamlin led over Tyler Reddick, Kyle Larson, and JGR teammate Christopher Bell. Meanwhile, Chase Briscoe, who was 13th when the caution came out, remained outside the Top 10 before the restart.

Bell made a solid restart, but soon, a nudge from the eventual race winner, Tyler Reddick, sent Bell into a spin that saw his No. 20 Toyota Camry slide all the way back to 20th. Speaking after the race, when asked about the incident, Bell said, "I haven’t seen it yet, so I don’t know." When asked about his biggest takeaway from the race, his answer was: "It s****.”

Before the contact, Christopher Bell had a solid race, starting 11th and finishing in the top five in both first and second stages. He even led the race for 47 laps, and his car, at certain points, looked even better than Hamlin’s No. 11 Camry.

Briscoe, meanwhile, went from outside the Top 10 to fourth in just over a lap post-restart. The chaos after Bell's contact benefitted him, and he eventually overtook his teammate, Hamlin, to finish on the podium.

Post race, Briscoe said, "We got really lucky. I think we ended up with 38 points. We could have very easily walked away with 27, 28 points."

Hamlin finished fourth after leading the race for 131 laps. JGR's fourth driver, Ty Gibbs, also finished in the Top 10.

Tyler Reddick apologizes to Christopher Bell

Christopher Bell was having a great race until the contact in overtime. He even had the best lap time with a 29.93-second run. He was furious with how it turned out, as evident from his aforementioned short answers post-race.

Tyler Reddick, who won his fifth race this season, regretted the contact with Bell. In the post-race interview with Jamie Little, he said:

"I really hate that for Christopher Bell. It’s a good hard racing, 11 came up and I just, I mean, took off tight. So not thrilled. I got Christopher there. I hate that for him because he’s having a solid day."

While Reddick extended his championship lead to 105 points, Bell fell one place to 10th, Hamlin rose to second, and Briscoe came up two places to 15th.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Yask Kotak