Bell’s win was the fifth-consecutive victory for Joe Gibbs Racing in the XFINITY Series at Kansas, tied for second-most in series history behind JGR’s nine-straight wins at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California from 2008 through 2013.
Reddick crossed the stripe second ahead of Blaney and JR Motorsports teammates William Byron and Justin Allgaier.
Austin Dillon, Elliott Sadler, Matt Tifft, Ty Dillon and Ryan Reed completed the top 10.
Meanwhile, after leading four times for 186 of the 200 laps, Jones faded to 15th in the final rundown after slowing with heavy right-front damage to his car in the final laps.
Jones was visibly frustrated as he surveyed the damage, before saying that he felt Bell’s move was uncalled for on the asphalt.
“It’s not dirt racing. I can’t just stop on the top,” Jones said. “I didn’t expect him to just drive in on the bottom so far that he wouldn’t be able to hold his lane. It’s unfortunate; this car was really good and I thought we were going to race for the win. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much of a race, it was more of a wreck.”
“We’ll just have to move on. It’s the first XFINITY race in a while that we’ve had a good car and I thought we were going to have a good shot for the win but it is what it is and that’s going to happen.”
The final stage was markedly clean, with Jones going from fifth to the lead in just two circuits following the green flag resumption at lap 97.
From there, the only caution was with 63 laps left, when Ryan Sieg went for a spin in tunr four just ahead of Jones and the rest of the leaders.
That set up the final round of pit stops with 60 to, and the green flag flying four laps later meant that Saturday’s race set a record for the longest green-flag stretch to close a Kansas XFINITY race in the history of the series.
Leaving Kansas, the JR Motorsports trio of Allgaier, Byron and Sadler have put themselves in prime position to make the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, sitting 33, 31 and 22 points above the cut line, respectively.
Brennan Poole holds the fourth and final advancement berth with two races remaining in the second round, with Matt Tifft five points back, Ryan Reed and Daniel Hemric six points out and Cole Custer eight points adrift of the cut line.
Custer came home 19th on Saturday after blowing a tire in the final laps.
The NASCAR XFINITY Series continues round two of its playoffs in two weeks, with the running of the O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway on Nov. 4 (8:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM).
Full race results can be viewed on the next page…
