LAS VEGAS — Christopher Bell‘s No. 20 Toyota was a rocket ship during Sunday‘s South Point 400 — for most of the race, it was clear he was superior to the field.

When Bell‘s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Ty Gibbs spun on the backstretch on Lap 192, it was just outside of the fuel window for most teams to make it to the finish. And with Bell having a dominant car, leading a race-high 155 laps, he would burn more fuel by leading the race.

“A win is a guarantee [of a berth into the Championship 4], and we had a win right at our fingertips,” Bell said.

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When the caution flag waved, crew chief Adam Stevens told Bell he would likely be a handful of laps short of making it to the end of the race on fuel. Stevens‘ strategy was to go as hard as possible at the beginning of the run before pitting and chasing down any stragglers that attempted to stretch their fuel.

It quickly became evident that playoff drivers Joey Logano, who is regarded as one of the best fuel-saving drivers in the sport, and Denny Hamlin were trying to go the distance. Meanwhile, Bell soared through the field after exiting the pits nearly 30 seconds off the lead and was told that drivers were aiming to go the distance on fuel.

While chasing down race leader Daniel Suarez, Ryan Blaney, who was eight laps off the pace after getting involved in an earlier wreck, began drafting with his Team Penske teammate Logano. Bell was clocking off seconds at a time, but when the checkered flag flew, he was nearly three-quarters of a second short of catching Logano.

Logano‘s Las Vegas victory locks him into the Championship 4 next month at Phoenix Raceway for a record sixth time in 11 years.

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“Disappointment,” Bell added when describing his race. “I lost an Xfinity race here; I think it was in 2019, in the exact same way where the yellow flag comes out on the outside of the window, leading the race, having to make a pit stop, and someone in the back stretches it. I‘ve seen it before, and I couldn‘t believe it.”

Dominating the race, Stevens knew his hands were tied. He also knew that there was a chance that some drivers were willing to gamble for the jackpot.

“There‘s nothing we could have done differently as a team; we executed on all fronts,” Stevens stated. “We brought arguably the best car, good pit strategy, great pit stops and that caution fell at exactly the wrong time. Two laps earlier or two laps later, it doesn‘t pan out that way. It happened right where it screwed the leaders. You can‘t be upset about that, you can‘t control that.”

Mowing back through the field, Bell doesn‘t believe he lost any time in lapped traffic. If the race was 268 laps, he likely would have been the victor. Instead, the result is “more of a dagger than last year” when he finished runner-up at the checkered flag to Kyle Larson.

By scoring 19 stage points and tallying 54 points on Sunday, Bell has a 42-point buffer over the elimination line with two races remaining in the Round of 8. He‘s also the defending winner at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

The No. 20 team has five straight top-10 finishes and is hitting its stride, but as Bell noted, nothing is guaranteed of being good enough to make the Championship 4.

“I would rather be in that spot than any other spot, but I can‘t tell you who is going to win next week and who is going to win the week after that,” Stevens said. “The points might not make that much of a difference; it might make all the difference. It all depends on how many winners there are. The math changes quickly if you have a top-eight winner.”