Christopher Bell’s win in the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 — his first in one of the NASCAR Cup Series’ crown jewels — was overshadowed by the controversial decision by NASCAR to end the race early when there was no rain in the forecast and it had already spent hours trying to dry the track.
NASCAR’s longest race ended 151 laps and 226.5 miles short of the scheduled distance, and everyone was robbed of seeing Kyle Larson charge through the field after his return from Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The move was so unpopular with fans that when Bell was first announced as the winner, he was booed.
But the win appears in the record books all the same, and Bell dominated the laps that were run, as he had an average running position of third and led 90 of the 249 laps.
Bell led the most laps of any driver in the Coke 373.5 (Ty Gibbs was second with 74 and William Byron was third with 49), and there’s extra significance behind that fact.
Because the race marked the first time that a driver who led the most laps won a rain-shortened Cup race since Joe Nemechek at Richmond Raceway in 2003.
2003.
In that 21-year span, there were 23 Cup races that failed to reach the scheduled distance. The driver that led the most laps lost them all.
Of course, the threat of rain throws a curveball into any race. That opens the door for drivers and teams that wouldn’t have a chance to win otherwise, and the dominant car often receives the short end of the stick if they are on the wrong strategy.
But from the start of the 1998 Cup season to Nemechek’s 2003 Richmond win, there were 14 rain- or darkness-shortened races. In those 14, the drivers who led the most laps went on to win 10 times.
That makes the recently snapped 0-for-23 streak an anomaly, and an absolutely crazy one at that. How did the race go awry for so many dominant cars so many times in a row?
Sometimes, the dominant car faded and wasn’t out front when the rain came. Of the 23 consecutive losses for the drivers who led the most laps, they finished runner-up five times and top 10 13 times. On other occasions, the driver was burned by pit strategy or had a crash/mechanical issue that took them out of contention well before the rain came.
I’ve compiled the 25 rain-shortened Cup races since 2003, complete with the total number of laps run and laps scheduled, the driver who led the most laps, how many they led and where they finished when the race was…
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