Bell falls short at Vegas hunting for Championship 4 advance

Christopher Bell felt he left all he had on the racetrack Sunday afternoon, but after coming up short to Kyle Larson by less than a car length, he couldn’t help but think of where the difference could have been found.

“The one thing I look back at -- I think it was the No. 15 and the No. 51 -- they were running together and then they separated for one corner and I ended up following one of them on the bottom,” Bell said. “That probably cost me 0.1-0.2s, and I got beat by less than 0.1s. I wish I had that corner to go to a different lane and try to keep my momentum up better, but it’s easy to find a 0.1s over 30 laps.”

Bell charged to Larson’s back bumper over the final stint, erasing a 1.6s deficit. On the final lap, Bell stayed committed to the high lane until off the final corner and tried to get to the inside of Larson when the Hendrick Motorsports driver pulled up to block Bell’s charge.

“I knew I wasn’t going to make a move following him,” Bell said. “So I figured I was going to have to do something different, and that’s why I moved up.”

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The margin of victory between Larson and Bell was 0.082s. Larson clinched a spot competing for the championship in the season finale, and Bell leaves the weekend two points below the cutline with two races left in the round. Bell made the Championship 4 a season ago with a walk-off win in the elimination race at Martinsville Speedway.

“I don't know what else I could have done,” Bell said. “I feel like that was my moment. That was my moment to make the final four. Didn't quite capture it. I don't know. Coming to the checkered there, I knew that he was going to be blocking, so I'm like, I'm going to try to go high. He went high. I don't even know if I had a run to get by him there coming to the line. Just wasn't enough.

“A great day, great day for sure to get the stage points [and] get a second-place finish out of it. I think I saw we're minus two, so we're not out of it by any means. It would have been nice to lock it in.”

Bell led 61 laps Sunday after starting from the pole and earned 17 points through the stages. Homestead-Miami Speedway, where the series visits next, has been hot and cold for Bell with one top-10 finish in three starts and four laps led.

“I wish we would have won (today) that’s for sure,” he said.