Bobby Travis · NASCAR/IndyCar Correspondent
By just 0.029 seconds, Christopher Bell missed victory against his own teammate at the Bank of America 400, marking his eighth second-place finish of the season.
Christopher Bell came up agonizingly short at the Bank of America 400 on the oval at Charlotte Motor Speedway, losing to his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe by 0.029 seconds in a historic photo finish. For the driver of the No. 20, it marked his eighth second-place finish of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season. A win would have moved him to second place in the Chase, but he remains third, 51 points behind Kyle Larson with four races left.
The Charlotte photo finish
It doesn't get much closer in oval racing. Briscoe led the final 61 laps. As he battled fading grip while managing lapped traffic, Bell closed in over the final five circuits, pulled alongside from the inside exiting Turn 4, and the two cars made contact in the tri-oval. In the end, it wasn't enough: the No. 20 missed the pass by a nose, with 0.029 seconds separating the two Gibbs cars.
"I got a lot closer than I thought I would," Bell said after the race. "It was a great day, but one that didn't give us much." The disappointment was written all over Bell, who found himself as close to victory as few drivers manage all season, only to come up empty once again.
A season defined by narrow defeats
Charlotte fits a pattern that has followed Bell throughout the 2026 season. Even before the Chase began, he tied a historic record with seven second-place finishes in the regular season without a win. It wasn't until the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington that Bell could end the drought and secure his only win of the year.
With Charlotte's result, Bell now has eight runner-up finishes this season. The consistency with which he reaches the podium is hard to match in the field, yet this very streak of second-place finishes now raises a question: how many wins can a driver miss before it costs him dearly in the championship fight?
Why second place stings in the championship battle
Under NASCAR's revamped points system for 2026, the race winner is rewarded far more than before: a win now brings 55 points instead of 40. For Bell, that means stage points and podium finishes secure solid points, but the gap to the top of the standings should grow if direct rivals take victories in the remaining races.
For the Chase phase, it comes down to one thing: the No. 20 consistently shows the pace to win in 2026 (at Charlotte, Bell led 93 laps and won the second stage), yet as long as those tight finishes in the closing laps don't go his way, his championship dream remains dependent on that sliver of luck that eluded him by mere inches at Charlotte.
