“I don’t know what it is about these finishes. I have to quit making it so exciting at the end,” said Briscoe, who had to hold off playoff points leader Kyle Larson to win last week at Las Vegas.
Briscoe said he felt like his right front tire was going down on the final laps, but was able to hold it together.
“When I got beyond those final lapped cars with five or six (laps) to go, I felt like I was going to knock the wall down,” Briscoe said. “At one point it just quit turning.”
Briscoe was 123 points behind playoff leader Kyle Larson prior to last week’s win, but the back-to-back wins have cut the deficit to 65 points and put him in fourth place with four races left.
Gibbs said he was just happy his drivers didn’t wreck each other.
“That’s always when I’m the most nervous, when a couple of our guys are running up front,” Gibbs said. “I know how badly all of our guys want to win. … That’s when my blood pressure and heartbeat gets accelerated.”
Ryan Blaney finished third, followed by Josh Berry, Denny Hamlin, and Larson. Hamlin is now 49 points behind Larson in the Chase, followed by Bell, who is 51 points back.
Larson called it a “good, solid day” and was happy to extend his playoff lead by nine points. Larson, who entered the race with five top five finishes including two wins in the postseason, started on pole based on NASCAR’s metric system after Saturday’s qualifying was rained out.
He made the most of the position, dominating the race early by leading 68 of the 80 laps in the first stage to collect the maximum number of points in stage one.
Bell caught Larson and won the second stage.
Several Chase contenders ran into problems in the first stage.
Hamlin, who entered the weekend in second place in the Chase and 40 points behind Larson, was sent to the back of the field for a loose tire on pit road on his first stop.
“We got to execute better, be a little faster — all of the above,” Hamlin said. “We’re giving it all we got right now.”
A few laps later, Ty Gibbs broke a toe link in his No. 54 Toyota causing him to hit the outside wall. Joey Logano, with nowhere to go, slammed into Gibbs from behind. Gibbs headed behind the wall for repairs and fell several laps behind, while Logano was sent to the back of the field.
And, near the end of the first stage, Alex Bowman’s car got loose and ran up the track and into Bubba Wallace’s car, collecting William Byron in the mix. Wallace climbed out of his car, but was taken to the infield medical center in an ambulance.
The crash sent all three cars behind the wall.
“I just got loose,” Bowman said. “Honestly, I had been really tight. As soon as it got to the exit of the corner, it snapped and it kind of didn’t stand a chance. Unfortunately, I grabbed too much wheel, overcorrected it and got in those two guys’ (Wallace and Byron) way. I hate that for the No. 24 and No. 23 teams. It’s one thing to get loose and crash, but to ruin their days too really sucks.”
After eight years, CMS and NASCAR said goodbye to the roval, changing the fall race from a road course back to the traditional 1½-mile oval course. That came as NASCAR shifted away from road courses and placed more emphasis on intermediate oval tracks before the season.
Drivers seemed to be in favor of the change.
“I appreciate the roval for what it was, and I’ve enjoyed the handful of years that we did it to start,” Chris Buescher said. ”Charlotte has so much character. It’s put on some really good races and I think that was the big push to get us back on the oval.”
The Cup Series heads to Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Ariz., next Sunday.