Christopher Bell pursues his first Food City 500 win on the concrete surface after winning last year’s Bristol dirt race. (Photo: Josh James | The Podium Finish)
BRISTOL, Tenn. — While Christopher Bell enters Sunday’s Food City 500 as the spring race winner at Bristol Motor Speedway, things are a bit different than last year’s Easter Sunday night race.
For starters, the 29-year-old Norman, Oklahoma, native, points out how the most recent spring race was on the temporary dirt surface adorning the 0.533-mile track. In a way, as Bell points out, it was almost like a different track.
“I don’t feel like the defending race winner,” Bell said. “It feels like we are at a different venue right now, compared to what it was 12 months ago. It is cool that I won the last dirt race.
“I take pride in that because I’m a dirt track racer. That’s what I grew up doing, but it definitely, definitely feels like a new venue. When you came here for the dirt race, it didn’t feel like you were at Bristol.”
In terms of the spring race weekend, Bell has only one start on the concrete surface. Placing ninth in the 2020 running of the 500-lap race, Bell will make his first start in this race with the No. 20 DeWalt Toyota Camry XSE entry fielded by Joe Gibbs Racing.
Overall, in five prior starts on the concrete surface of Bristol, Bell has two top fives and three top 10 finishes. In fact, Bell has tallied a fourth and third in the two most recent Bristol Night Races typically run in mid-September.
Before taking to the track for Saturday’s on-track activities, Bell entered the race weekend with confidence. Winning last Sunday’s Shriners Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway, Bell observed how it was a goal for him and his No. 20 team to win an early season race to tally critical Playoff points.
“That has been our focus ever since that ’21 season, where we won early and then we never got any more Playoff points after that, but then ’22 and ’23, we’re kind of the same,” he said. “We just have not been able to execute on multiple race wins and multiple stage wins. That has been a focus the last several years, of us trying to be the team going into the Playoffs that has the points buffer, because certainly when you get into the Round of 12, Round of 8, I had to win basically if I was going to make the final 4.
“I don’t know other than to say it is the same mentality that we’ve had, just we had to do a better job of executing it. Getting Playoff points is hard. The only way to get Playoff points is to win races, win stages – and being up in the final regular season standings. We need to win more. I need to win more, and good news is we want to win more, so that is what it is all about.”
Perhaps Bell can be in the hunt for those Playoff points on Sunday afternoon at Bristol. Namely, he has led 33% of the laps run at Bristol on the concrete surface when considering the past two races at this facility.
There are no signs of Christopher Bell slowing down despite qualifying 12th for Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol. (Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
Even for a short track specialist like Bell, he illustrated how much of a challenge it is to acclimate to Bristol after racing on the 1-mile, somewhat flatter Phoenix Raceway in terms of the physicality and mental acumen needed to excel in the driver’s seat.
“There is an adjustment period for sure,” he observed. “That is a little unique to Bristol because even at Martinsville, it’s a half-mile in length, the speed is slower than here, so the acclamation time isn’t as big, but definitely that first run of practice, I think all of us are going to be holding our breath and the crew chief is going to be asking what we need on the car, and we are going to be like hang on, I’m trying to breathe in here.
“The acclamation period at Bristol is probably the biggest of the schedule, and the runs at Bristol – while the lap times are short – the lap count is really, really high. A 90-lap run at Phoenix is probably a little bit easier on us than 125-lap run, which we have to do Stage 1 of the race on Sunday. The lap count being high here makes it a little bit tougher.”
Starting 12th for Sunday’s race, Bell showed no signs of slowing down from his Phoenix win. Bell was eighth fastest in Saturday’s practice session and fourth overall in the 10-lap consecutive average charts.
Nevertheless, the 2017 NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series champion wants to excel at another facet of his life as a racer. In this case, he wants to showcase who he is away from the track and just as his usual self.
Given Bell’s easygoing nature seen in NASCAR: Full Speed on Netflix, he does not dismiss how the docuseries did more than get him out of his shell.
“It has been something that I haven’t been very good at – showing my personality, showing who I am, to the general public, so whenever I got the opportunity to be on the Netflix show, I tried to open up as much as I could,” Bell admitted. “I just hope that we are able to keep it going, keep the momentum going.
“I know that the ratings have been really good this year, and there has been a lot of positivity going into 2024, so hopefully we can keep the ball rolling.”
