Christopher Bell, like William Byron, got some momentum back via their top five finishes in Sunday’s Go Bowling at The Glen. However, both had a different set of emotions following 90 laps of clean racing at Watkins Glen International.

Bell, despite scoring his first top five finish since his Bristol Dirt win 16 races ago, was pretty dejected. That’s because he knows how much of the essence points are and for Byron to win, it actually puts him further behind.

Bell sits fourth in the NASCAR Cup Series points heading to the regular season finale next Saturday night in Daytona but is also 32 points back in the process. That’s a tall order to make up likely leaving him finishing fourth at best in the standings after 26 races. He’s 31 points up on Bryon’s teammate, Kyle Larson.

The difference between finishing 3rd and 4th in the standings is 1 playoff point for which Bell knows could be a difference in making it the next round of the playoffs or not. That’s why he felt the way that he did.

“Yeah, I don’t know. I’m happy that we finished third. The regular season points battle is super, super tight, and the guy that we’re trying to pass in the points is sitting on the frontstretch,” said Bell. “He showed up and won the race. I’m really proud of this No. 20 group, though. They made some awesome changes overnight and overall this DeWalt Camry was super fast all weekend long.

“It’s crazy to say that 90 laps and I feel like we lost because we didn’t qualify better yesterday, but whenever people don’t make mistakes it’s hard to pass them.”

Still, the momentum is coming back. Indy’s top 10 (9th place) was just the second in 7 races. That’s why he was happier then than he is now.

“Yeah, it’s just very, very nice to finally be able to get a couple of races put together without any incident,” he said. “I was probably happier with last week at Indy finishing ninth than I was today just because Indy was the first race in a long time that us as a group were able to put a whole day together without making a mistake.

“I know we have all the pieces and I’ve been saying it for a long time, but they haven’t come together yet, and when they do, we’re close. Whenever they do come together we’ll be right there at the front.”