MARTINSVILLE, Va. — It took over 25 minutes for the results to come in: William Byron was declared the fourth driver to advance to the Championship 4 following the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
“We want to get it right, first and foremost,” Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, said. “This is not something that happens every week. We want to be prepared.”
While Ryan Blaney drove to the victory at Martinsville to punch his ticket into the Championship 4, the final spot was a tossup between Byron and Christopher Bell, separated by a single point in the final laps. The No. 24 Chevrolet was fading back, but Byron settled into sixth. Directly behind Byron were two Chevrolet teammates in Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon. The two rode side-by-side and didn’t attempt to pass a struggling Byron.
“Nobody lifted behind me,” Byron stated after the race.
Meanwhile, Bell, who was recovering from a loose wheel at the end of Stage 2, passed Bubba Wallace entering Turn 3 on the final lap before hitting the wall in the middle of Turns 3 and 4 and riding it to the finish. At the end of 500 laps, Bell and Byron were tied in points, with Bell getting the nod in the tiebreaker. It was reminiscent of Chastain’s Hail Melon move on the final lap in the penultimate race of the 2022 season that clinched him a spot into Phoenix. Over the 2023 offseason, that move was outlawed.
Following the checkered flag, NASCAR officials came together to discuss the conclusion of the race. The sanctioning body penalized Bell for breaking an in-race violation, scoring him as the final car on his lap, dropping the No. 20 Toyota to 22nd in the finishing order. He would have finished 18th without attempting the move.
“I just slid into the wall,” Bell said. “We were racing for every point, and I slid into the wall. I was just trying to pass [Wallace] and I slid into the wall.”
Should Christopher Bell race for the NASCAR Championship?
Watch this move on the final lap. pic.twitter.com/3A3BrNe0fd
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) November 3, 2024
Crew chief of the No. 20 car Adam Stevens doesn’t believe Bell’s move was adjacent to Chastain’s from 2022. According to his SMT data, Bell’s final lap time was one-second slower from the previous lap.
“If we’re just talking about the decision, this situation is nothing like the situation of the [No.] 1 car [in 2022],” Stevens said. “We attempted to make the corner, we passed the [No.] 23, we got into the marbles, got into the fence after we passed the [No.] 23. We weren’t up there matting the gas and grabbing gears.
“It sucks that it’s a judgment call. You can’t appeal an in-race violation. I just don’t see anything that’s even remotely close to what [Chastain] did that they outlawed.”
Stevens is convinced that the Nos. 1 and 3 cars “plugged the track up and hunkered down” to not allow a charging Brad Keselowski or any additional drivers to pass Byron. The decision will take some time for the veteran crew chief to digest, as he misses out on making it to his eighth Championship 4 in 11 seasons.
“All I can control is what I can control,” Stevens said. “Go re-run the race and any number of races and I’m sure we left some [playoff] points out there throughout the year up to this point. At the end of the day, we don’t have anyone to blame but ourselves.
“I just don’t understand NASCAR’s ruling, despite their attempts to explain it to me. I don’t see any equivalency to what happened with us and what happened to the [No.] 1 and I think the SMT data shows that clearly. I don’t like that the Chevys can clog the whole track up and change the outcome of the race, but I can’t do anything about it.”
After the race, Joe Gibbs, Heather Gibbs, Dave Alpern, president of JGR and Stevens met with NASCAR to discuss the decision. Because Bell’s move was an in-race violation, it cannot be appealed.
Byron clinched a spot into the Championship 4 for the second straight season. He’s the lone Hendrick Motorsports driver to advance, while teammates Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott were eliminated.
“I don’t know what to think. I have a hard time feeling happy in this situation, but we just raced as hard as we could,” Byron said. “I was racing within the rules and everything like that. It is what it is at that point.
“I can’t wait to be able to race for a championship next week; I know we will bring a bullet there.”
Bell entered the final race in the Round of 8 with a 29-point buffer. He missed out on scoring stage points in the opening stage, but earned seven in Stage 2. The loose wheel at the end of the stage was a dagger that set him back.
The No. 20 team had top five finishes in the first two races of the round, dominating at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to kick it off. Joey Logano stretched his fuel mileage in Sin City and Bell came up a half-second short of the win.
“For the amount of things that had to go wrong to keep us out of the Championship 4, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be,” Stevens said.
Before returning to the garage, Bell approached Byron and gave him a nod of respect: ‘Well, Willy, that’s not how I wanted it to go, but congratulations.”