Based on observation, the "magic" of NASCAR all seems to be held somewhere up in the northeast, whether it's former NASCAR Xfinity Series star and Modified Tour great Mike "Magic Shoes" McLaughlin or "The Magic Mile" of the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Somehow, Christopher Bell -- from all the way out in Norman, Okla. -- has tapped into that magic.
Bell's win at New Hampshire, capping off a weekend sweep that also included his victory in the Xfinity race the previous day, drove home just how exceptionally well he has performed at New Hampshire at every level of NASCAR. Thanks to two Cup wins, a perfect four-for-four Xfinity wins and a Truck Series win, Bell already has seven total wins at Loudon and is halfway to the record for most Cup wins ever at the track (four). The record, currently shared by Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick, is one Bell would probably have already either matched or broken had it not been for Loudon going from two to one race on NASCAR's schedule in 2018.
Bell's win at New Hampshire marked his third of the season, putting an exclamation point on his place among the elites of the NASCAR Cup Series in 2024. All four drivers who have won multiple races have won three apiece, and Bell stands above them all in this week's CBS Sports NASCAR Power Rankings.
Here's a look at CBS Sports' latest NASCAR Power Rankings:
| Rank | Driver | Change | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Christopher Bell | Late Sunday night, the word online was that Joe Gibbs Racing was going to have a driver announcement Tuesday. I think a lot of people have an idea what it's going to be already. It's not like Christopher Bell already told us or anything. | ||
| 2 | Kyle Larson | The three NASCAR Cup Series race held at Nashville Superspeedway have all featured three different winners, starting with Kyle Larson in 2021. The last repeat winner for any Cup race in Nashville was Franklin, Tenn.'s own Darrell Waltrip, who won eight Cup races at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, including three in a row from 1982 to 1983. | ||
| 3 | Chase Elliott | Chase Elliott's run-in with Joey Logano at New Hampshire combined with a top-five finish for Kyle Larson has created a tie for the points lead between the two in the regular-season standings. Larson wins the tiebreaker by virtue of his three wins on the year to Elliott's one. | ||
| 4 | Ryan Blaney | Ryan Blaney has a third-place finish at Nashville in 2022, but this weekend might determine if the annual trip to Music City is one he looks forward to or not. He has two DNFs in his two other Nashville races, both due to crashes. | ||
| 5 | Tyler Reddick | -- | What life is like in journalism: When it started raining at New Hampshire, I typed up my quick race recap of Tyler Reddick getting the win and had it all ready to go before never using it at all. I expect Tyler Reddick wishes I didn't end up having to delete that thing. | |
| 6 | Brad Keselowski | Nothing personal against Brad Keselowski -- I have an enormous amount of respect for him and it wasn't great that a late-race spin led to his worst finish since Dover -- but I can't say I felt bad that the Boston Red Sox Ford ended up spun out and at the back of the pack. Go Yanks! | ||
| 7 | Ross Chastain | -- | On the note of Darrell Waltrip's Nashville three-peat, that's also the last time any driver has won back-to-back Cup races in Music City. This weekend, Ross Chastain will try to join a group that also includes Jim Paschal, Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and Benny Parsons. | |
| 8 | Chris Buescher | A fifth-place finish at New Hampshire was a massive improvement for Chris Buescher, as he had never finished better than 15th in any of his prior starts there. He'll hope for a similar such turnaround at Nashville, where he's crashed twice and has never been better than 18th. | ||
| 9 | Todd Gilliland | Todd Gilliland had a new sponsor for New Hampshire in Grillo's Pickles, and he wound up leading 19 laps and finishing 12th in the Pickle Car. Please acknowledge my admirable restraint in never once calling him "Pickle Todd" all weekend. | ||
| 10 | Martin Truex Jr. | How different Martin Truex Jr.'s race at New Hampshire could have been if it wasn't for bad execution on pit road. Truex had just as good if not an even better car than race winner Christopher Bell, but the jack getting let down too early led to Truex losing all his track position and then getting spun into the Turn 4 wall. He recovered to finish ninth. | ||
| 11 | Josh Berry | Coming off chances to win both Iowa and New Hampshire, Josh Berry has all the momentum in the world heading into his home track this weekend in Nashville. We'll see if the Hendersonville, Tenn. native can keep it up just a little ways down the road from where it all began for him. | ||
| 12 | Joey Logano | No one wants misfortune when they're on the playoff bubble, but sometimes the misfortune of your competitors can be just as important as the way you run yourself. Joey Logano looked to be in trouble when he had major problems on a restart that relegated him to 32nd, but a crash for Bubba Wallace combined with the stage points he gained allowed him to jump up to a 13-point advantage over Wallace for the final playoff spot. | ||
| 13 | William Byron | The bad news for William Byron is that after finishing 26th at New Hampshire, he's now run 26th or worse in two of his last three starts. The good news is he has a third and a sixth in two of his three Nashville starts to date. | ||
| 14 | Ricky Stenhouse Jr. | For the first time all season, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. earned back-to-back top-10 finishes by running seventh at New Hampshire. He had a top 10 in the inaugural Cup race at Nashville in 2021, finishing sixth. | ||
| 15 | Justin Haley | As of right now, no driver in Cup is doing anything more impressive than what Justin Haley is doing right now for Rick Ware Racing. It's a crying shame that the damage Haley sustained clipping Ryan Blaney and Michael McDowell's crash in the final laps ruined what likely would have been a top-five finish for him this past weekend. | ||
| 16 | Michael McDowell | While Michael McDowell's most realistic path to a playoff spot is winning a race, it should be noted that he's only 99 points back of the playoff cut line following New Hampshire. He may have been better off just taking a top five and taking the points than he would have been trying to sail it in there on that late restart, though he did earn 22 points anyway by finishing 15th. | ||
| 17 | Denny Hamlin | Arguably the most stark and dramatic difference in how a driver ran before vs. after the rain belonged to Denny Hamlin. After leading 43 laps and running third before the rains came, Hamlin was never to be heard from again on a wet racetrack and finished all the way back in 24th to continue his major falloff over the last three races. | ||
| 18 | Alex Bowman | An engine failure ruined Alex Bowman's day at New Hampshire, as he dropped out of the race just 142 laps in after blowing up under caution. A 36th-place finish marked the first time Bowman has finished last in a Cup race since he crashed out at Chicago last July. | ||
| 19 | Chase Briscoe | On the converse of Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe enjoyed a dramatic turnaround after the rain that culminated in him edging Josh Berry at the line for a runner-up finish. For Briscoe, that second-place finish was his best in any Cup race since his first win at Phoenix in 2022. | ||
| 20 | Daniel Suarez | It was a long day for everyone at New Hampshire, but it had to feel twice as long for Daniel Suarez and his team. After how much they struggled early in the going, finishing 21st had to feel like a real accomplishment for that group. | ||
| 21 | Ty Gibbs | -- | Ty Gibbs seemingly found a comfortable place in midpack at New Hampshire, as he finished 16th after starting 18th. That's not far off from 14th, where Gibbs finished a year ago in his lone Nashville start to date. | |
| 22 | Carson Hocevar | The winner at Nashville Superspeedway earns a Gibson Guitar, and there's been one on Carson Hocevar's mantle since last year's Craftsman Truck Series race there. Hocevar won last year's Truck race at Nashville after leading 40 laps, one of four wins he had on his way to the Championship 4. | ||
| 23 | Austin Cindric | Austin Cindric's finishes in his last six Cup starts: 20th, 20th, 1st, 22nd, 30th, 19th. Winning means everything! | ||
| 24 | Bubba Wallace | It wasn't as egregious as the example I'm going to bring up, but the way Bubba Wallace drove up to Noah Gragson while he was in his pit stall looked somewhat similar to what Kurt Busch did to Tony Stewart at Dover in 2007, and as I recall Busch got in quite a bit of trouble after nearly hitting one of Stewart's crewmembers in the process. Wallace has gotta watch that. | ||
| 25 | Corey LaJoie | Another driver thankful for the durability of the Next Gen car: Corey LaJoie took a fairly flush hit into the New Hampshire wall with the left side of his car, but he managed to finish on the lead lap in 23rd with it anyway. | ||
| 26 | Noah Gragson | If you follow Noah Gragson on Instagram, you'll see the posts he's making about his new obsession with Legos. I'm not a doctor, but this man has a textbook case of Lego-mania. | ||
| 27 | Harrison Burton | With a 14th-place finish at New Hampshire, Harrison Burton now has two top-20 finishes in a row and three top-15 finishes in 2024. He'll try and step up again at Nashville, where Burton just missed out on a top 20 in 21st a year ago. | ||
| 28 | Kyle Busch | While Kyle Busch was running at the back and about to get lapped at New Hampshire, I saw someone make a comment along the lines of, "Things can't get any worse than this, right?" Then Busch crashed three times including once under caution. Never forget: It can *always* get worse. | ||
| 29 | Ryan Preece | Lebanon is a little ways away from downtown Nashville where the Sounds play, but Ryan Preece is batting 1000 in the Craftsman Truck Series race at Nashville. He entered it twice in 2021 and 2022 and won it both times. | ||
| 30 | John Hunter Nemechek | For the first time since Bristol in March, John Hunter Nemechek earned a top-10 finish by running eighth at New Hampshire. He'll now make his first Cup start at Nashville, where he's run 10th and ninth in Trucks and then sixth in Xfinity a year ago. |
