By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service
LOUDON, N.H. – Christopher Bell continued his dominance at New Hampshire Motor Speedway claiming a sweep of the NASCAR race weekend, but the Joe Gibbs Racing driver really had to earn that “broom” in Sunday’s weather-challenged USA Today 301.
The 29-year-old Oklahoman beat Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe to the finish line by 1.104-second in overtime in a race that lasted six hours including a two-hour-plus rain delay and ultimately ended with the field on damp surface tires; only the second time in NASCAR history a points-paying race used the newly-developed tires.
Bell’s No. 20 JGR Toyota led a race best 149 of the 305 laps Sunday, a day after he won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at the 1.058-mile New England oval. He is now one of four drivers to have three NASCAR Cup Series wins on the season. It was his ninth career series win.
Bell was so excited with the victory he even promised he would “pick that sucker up” referring with a smile to the traditional lobster given to race winners in Victory Lane, something he previously was reticent to do.
“It was literally the tale of two different events,”’ Bell smiled when asked about the race.
“You never know how this thing is going to shake out whenever you change so many things like that and have adverse conditions,” said a beaming Bell, who now has seven wins in 11 national series starts at the New Hampshire track – collecting his fourth NASCAR Xfinity Series win on Saturday.
“I personally love adverse conditions because you’re always trying to think outside the box,” he continued. “When we went back out [on wet weather tires after the red flag delay] I was feeling around and it felt like the normal Loudon groove was really really slippery so I tried to just run down or up, but [crew chief] Adam [Lambert] really put the tune on this thing and it was running good.
“This is really cool.”
It was certainly new territory for the series and the sport. In years past, perhaps the race would just have been called with the rain showers came through with enough laps in the book that had already made it a legal points event.
But with the recent development of wet weather tires, NASCAR instead opted to wait out the showers and give the rain tires a try on a damp track. NASCAR officials said they would have absolutely had to just call the race early had it not been for the new tires.
“We’d have been…
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