Christopher Bell takes the checkered flag on rain tires at the NASCAR Cup race in New Hampshire

LOUDON, N.H. (AP) — Christopher Bell raised a broom over his head and clutched a 24-pound lobster in victory lane – all because he earned his third Cup victory of the season, a result that would have been impossible before this NASCAR season.

Damn, most of Sunday the rainy track still looked pretty bleak.

When the skies cleared, NASCAR pulled out its latest creation, which it had been saving for rainy days: Goodyear rain tires, which allowed the race to continue to a thrilling finish at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Bell mastered the first Cup Series race that ended with cars drive with rain tires and pulled away after a weather-related delay of 2 hours and 15 minutes to beat the darkness and the field to win in New Hampshire on Sunday.

After his victory on Saturday in the Xfinity Series, he also cleaned up this weekend in New Hampshire.

“Hopefully it was entertaining because it was something different, something new, and nobody knew what to expect and what to do,” Bell said. “The guys who figured it out the quickest were the most successful.”

On Friday, Bell revealed that Chase Briscoe is joining him at Joe Gibbs Racing in 2025. He then ruined Briscoe’s best chance for his first win of the season by holding him off in the final two laps of overtime.

As darkness fell, Bell passed Josh Berry and Briscoe to remain the driver to beat in New Hampshire. He has four Xfinity Series victories at Loudon and won a Cup race at the track for the second time.

This time he won after 86 laps on the new tires.

“It was dark. It was very, very dark. It was getting darker and darker and it was getting too dark to race,” Bell said. “Obviously there were dry sections of the track, but there were also a lot of wet sections of the track. I can’t tell you how far it was, but in my opinion it wasn’t ready for the dry tires yet.”

Bell was used to rain – he won the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 last month with 151 laps left to go.

New Hampshire actually needed four extra laps. Briscoe finished second and Berry third. Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher rounded out the top five.

“I think we probably could have started with a little bit of a wetter track,” Briscoe said. “It was pretty fun at the beginning. We were all over the place. Sometimes five abreast, sliding and sliding around.”

Despite the race’s start being moved up by half an hour, chaos reigned from the start in New Hampshire. The race was marred by accidents that knocked out some of NASCAR’s biggest stars – while the rest of the field tried to stay in the race and avoid the threat of rain that lingered throughout the weekend.

Tyler Reddick, who won at Talladega this season, was in the lead when the race was red-flagged due to rain with 82 laps to go in the scheduled 301-lap race.

Fans left the stands and drivers returned to their RVs, seemingly with no prospect of returning as the gloomy weather worsened. New Hampshire and NASCAR waited out a tornado warning, nearby lightning strikes and a severe weather warning before resuming the race after a delay of more than two hours — and after crew members swept standing water from pit road — and all cars took to the 1.058-mile track with new tires.

NASCAR allowed teams to use rain tires in a points race for the first time this season. Teams had a maximum of four sets of rain tires to run on the wet oval track. Teams had to use rain tires during pit stops and their position could not be affected.

They also had no choice about the tires.

They were also no match for Bell in his No. 20 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing.

Oh, and as for the spoiler about Briscoe going to JGR, Gibbs said all is forgiven.

“Someone in the winner’s circle asked me about it and I said, ‘Christopher Bell can do whatever he wants,'” Gibbs said with a laugh.

Busch’s problems

Kyle Busch’s dismal day ended with his Chevy being towed from the track.

Busch hit the wall during the caution laps and ended his race. This continued the season that turned out to be the worst of his Cup career. Busch had already the wall marked just past the halfway point of the race and was running 24th towards the end of the race when he was involved in another accident. He finished 35th in another tough outing this season, driving for Richard Childress Racing.

Busch, a two-time Cup champion with 231 NASCAR victories, has yet to win a race this season as a driver for RCR. Busch caused a stir last week when he suggested he was open to returning to two of his former Cup teams, but said he is staying with RCR next season.

The 39-year-old Busch has not won a race in 39 races. It is the worst losing streak of his career.

Corrupted races

Alex Bowman, who was winless this season for Hendrick Motorsports, ran into trouble when his No. 48 Chevrolet started smoking. The hood blew up on pit road and the car was soon pushed into the garage for repairs. He finished 36th.

Joey Logano locked the left front tire of the No. 22 Ford on a lap 194 restart and collided with Chase Elliott. Martin Truex Jr., last year’s New Hampshire winner, spun and hit the wall after colliding with Brad Keselowski with 91 laps to go.

Bubba Wallace was knocked out of the race by Noah Gragson after the rain delay.

Proud to be American

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Daniel Suarez stuck an American flag sticker on his Chevrolet, a few days after he U.S. citizensSuarez, who is from Monterrey, Mexico, was one of 48 representatives from 28 countries who were sworn in at a ceremony in North Carolina this week.

Next

NASCAR heads to Nashville Superspeedway next weekend. Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain edged out Truex in last season’s race to win.

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