DARLINGTON, S.C. — After finishing second a maddening seven times this season without a single victory, Christopher Bell started to wonder when he’d win again.Turns out he picked a pretty good time to break through.Bell won NASCAR’s crown jewel Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Sunday night, a race that also served as the opener for the 10-race championship “Chase.” He snapped a 33-race losing streak in the process.“It’s been too damn long!” Bell yelled after climbing from his car. “It’s been a long time coming. … This is the ultimate driver’s track.”
Christopher Bell is a Southern 500 winner! pic.twitter.com/Yb6Uc79gnh
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) September 7, 2026Bell entered the Chase as the No. 6 seed after a tumultuous regular season, but his Southern 500 win immediately vaulted him four spots to second in the points standings. Coupled with Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin’s rough night and 18th-place finish, Bell is now just 12 points out of the lead — remarkable considering he broke his wrist in a June race at Michigan.“I thought my season was over,” Bell said of the injury. “I thought I was going to be out a couple of weeks. I thought I was going to miss the Chase. We’re still in it, baby!”Bell raced with a cast for several weeks, including on the road course at Sonoma Raceway. He gritted through it and climbed back into a decent position for the Chase.Now he’s a winner again, and in a big moment, at that. The Southern 500 was Bell’s second NASCAR crown jewel win, following his Coca-Cola 600 victory in 2024. Under NASCAR’s previous playoff format, Bell finished in the top five in each of the past four seasons, topping out at third in 2022.Bell passed Kyle Larson with 11 laps remaining Sunday and drove away from JGR teammate Ty Gibbs, who finished second.Ryan Blaney, who finished fourth, is also in championship contention at only 16 points behind Hamlin. Tyler Reddick, who finished third, is 24 points out of the lead.— Jeff GluckHamlin’s hiccupAfter finishing third in both Stage 1 and 2, it looked like Hamlin, the No. 1 seed, was sailing toward the start he needed to finally win his first career championship.Then a bad pit stop set off a sequence of events that cost him dearly.Hamlin’s team had a tough time on a pit stop in Stage 3, dropping him to 19th place. Then, when trying to pass Michael McDowell, Hamlin cut up in front of McDowell but got put into the wall by the driver he had just passed.The contact bent one of Hamlin’s toe links, and he limped home to an 18th-place finish.A problematic pit stop cost Denny Hamlin on Sunday at Darlington. (Meg Oliphant / Getty Images)“Certainly not the finish we were hoping for,” Hamlin said. “… We had a tough pit stop there that set us back. You’re with guys who are a little more aggressive and don’t really care about the points. Sometimes you don’t get cut a break, and that’s the way it goes.”The positive for Hamlin was that his two third-place stage finishes helped him earn the seventh-most points of any driver on Sunday night. That helped limit the damage, though he now has three drivers within 24 points of the lead — all closer than the 25-point buffer he had to start the Chase.— Jeff GluckByron blows upWilliam Byron’s Chase may already be over before it barely started.Byron, who entered as the No. 13 seed, seemed to be having a great night and was en route to a top-10 finish as one of Chevrolet’s top drivers on Sunday.But with 51 laps to go, Byron suddenly spun out with what he thought was a flat tire, but he later found out his engine blew.Whatever the cause of his incident, the damage was brutal: Byron finished in 37th place and left with just six points despite a pair of top-10 stage finishes. He is now 114 points out of the Chase lead with nine races remaining, effectively ending his hopes already.Byron has not won a race this season and would need to go on an all-time heater to catch the leaders now.— Jeff GluckHocevar makes another enemyCarson Hocevar came into the Chase hoping for 10 clean weeks in which he would look up at the end and see where it got him in the standings.Instead, he added yet another driver to his long list of angry competitors after wrecking Brad Keselowski early in Sunday’s race.Keselowski ended up with a 23rd-place finish while Hocevar was 11th. But a visibly angry Keselowski told “Above the Yellow Line Media” that although the two didn’t have any previous history, “there will be.”“His day is coming, and it’s coming hard. Watch out, Carson,” Keselowski told the outlet.“I thought I was racing,” Hocevar said. “… He was spinning, slowing down. I couldn’t go up because there’s a guy in my right rear. So, yeah, I kind of double-hit him there, I guess. But the first one, for sure, I felt like we were just racing really hard. He wasn’t cutting me any breaks, obviously, trying to kind of mirror drive there.”— Jeff Gluck and Jordan BianchiBriscoe overcomes pit road miscueChase Briscoe was well positioned for a Southern 500 three-peat, only for a mistake on a pit stop to unravel his night. And though he was still able to rally back to a sixth-place finish, it was hard not to feel like this one slipped away.The problem that semi-derailed Briscoe’s night can be traced back to a pit stop roughly halfway through Stage 2 when the No. 19 team failed to fully fuel Briscoe’s car. Had they done so, he would’ve had zero problems making it to the end of the stage. Instead, Briscoe ran out of fuel on the final lap, forcing him to pit road before it was open.
