Christopher Bell should be celebrating a runner-up finish in Sunday’s South Point 400. However, he was in no mood for smiling after coming home just .082-seconds away from a second straight Championship 4 berth.

Bell started on the pole and led 61 of the 267 laps on Sunday but just didn’t have enough to get to Larson on the final run to net just his second win of the season.

While Bell tried hard chasing Larson down and made a move for the victory, it wasn’t enough. Despite scoring 17 stage points (2nd most) on the day and coming home 2nd, Bell is still 2 points below the cutline heading to Homestead next week. It gained him just 6 points as he entered -8.

“I feel like that was my moment,” a disappointed Bell said. “That was my moment to make the Final Four. Didn’t quite capture it. I don’t know. Coming to the checkered there, I knew that he was going to be blocking, so I’m like, I’m going to try to go high. He went high. I don’t even know if I had a run to get by him there coming to the line. Just wasn’t enough.”

It makes you wonder if this was his shot.

For Homestead, Bell has just one Top-10 finish in three Homestead Cup tries (11th last year) and was also sixth, fifth, 14th and 23rd respectively in his last four Darlington starts.

Denny Hamlin won there in 2020. William Byron won on this track in 2021. Martin Truex Jr. has 3 top 2 finishes in his last 5 there. It’s easy to see 1 of them winning and the other 2 pulling further ahead.

Then at Martinsville, Bell was always a fade until his playoff win in this very race last year. Bell had three Top 8’s, two of which are Top 5’s, in four Truck Series starts at Martinsville. However, in five Cup Series starts entering last October’s race, he finished 28th, 15th, seventh, 17th and 20th respectively with nine career laps led…Then he went out and led 150 laps to take a clutch victory. This past spring, he was back to his old ways in a 16th place finish without any laps led. On short tracks this season, he’s also finished sixth, fourth 16th, sixth, 29th, 20th, third too.

While he’s finished 8th, 3rd, 4th, 14th, 15th, 2nd in the last 6 weeks, he’s going to eventually have to find victory lane if he wants a shot at Phoenix.

His only win in 2023 was on dirt.

“I know we may not be the championship favorite,’’ Bell said on Saturday. “But I know we have everything we need to do it.’’

“We’re in a good place.”

Now, he may not be.

He’s 0-for-6 when starting from the pole and among the 32 Cup Series races here, just once did the pole winner wind up in victory lane. That was Kyle Busch 14 years ago in 2009.