By Jerry Jordan, Editor
AUSTIN, Tex. – Kyle Busch led 42 laps at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) and said he did everything he could to help Christopher Bell dump him to get to the front of the field but Bell ran him down and passed him cleanly to go on for his second NASCAR victory in as many weeks.
Given what happened last week at Atlanta Motor Speedway and at the season-opening Daytona 500 a week before that, it may have been expected that late race chaos would continue with drivers dumping each other while battling for the win.
“He was gracious and very clean for how I was and what I was,” Busch said. “So, I was cutting him off and blocking and doing all the stupid stuff that you need to do to try to protect the lead. But he was much faster than me and was able to just do a good job of biding his time and waiting for me to make a couple of mistakes in a row. Once I made two mistakes in a row, then it was over.”
Although he ended up sliding back to finish fourth, his consolation prize is that he leaves COTA gaining 46 points, the most of any driver on the day.
Bell said following the race that he set Busch up for a pass going into Turn 1 but was too hot and began to slide, which would have wiped Busch out and possibly taken himself out of contention for the win. He explained that he aborted the pass, regrouped and was able to pass him cleaner a lap, or so, later.
“You know, I can’t reiterate how amazing it was to have such respectful, clean and hard racing,” Bell told Kickin’ the Tires. “I mean, that was just a beautiful ending to a race. Kyle Busch, whenever he got out front, I am trying my hardest to get position on him to out-brake him, and he was attacking his brake zones so hard that I could not get there. There was once that I had to abort and I am sure everyone saw me getting into (Turn) one. I was like, ‘alright, I’ve got him now, I got him’ and I drove in there and locked the rears up and I am sliding and have to go right to try and miss him. Thankfully, I did miss him.
“Whenever I got out front, I had been struggling on the long runs and I think probably we all were but I had been following it back comparatively to my competitors all race. I thought maybe when I got in the lead I could be good but I was just slipping and sliding around like we all were. I was just concentrating on not beating myself. It wasn’t the cleanest laps I ran at the end but they were enough to hold on.”
Bell did concede that he thought about what happened in 2024 when he accidentally took Busch out of the race at COTA but it didn’t change his approach because he is typically a clean racer.
The sentiment of clean racing was shared between all of the Top 5 drivers. Byron, who was the runner-up at COTA, explained that all of the drivers at the front of the field have a history of racing each other respectfully.
“There at the end it was a battle between me and Bell, and you know, he just, I think once he got clear of Kyle, he had slid his tires quite a bit and was pretty loose,” Byron said. “He had been faster than us throughout the third stage but gave me an opportunity to kind of get close and you know, he did a good job defending and just never could quite get beside him.”
Byron had a bird’s eye view of how Bell got back Busch to take the lead and said that it somewhat set the tone for how he knew he needed to race to the end. He also stressed that he and Bell have always raced clean against one another.
“I mean, he passed Kyle really clean,” Byron said. “If he had passed Kyle dirty, like maybe that opens the door for me to kind of, you know, game on. Me and Bell have always raced well together … So, it’s kind of a, you know, mutual respect and I feel like, yeah, like I said, if he would have roughed people up to get there, it would have been a different game. That didn’t happen.”
Chase Elliott, who finished fourth, made his thoughts very clear about his view of the end of the race.
“That right there is a great example of three very respectful, talented race car drivers, you know, duking it out for a win without crashing each other. It was awesome to watch,” Elliott said.