(Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
LONG POND, Pa. — Before last weekend’s race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Christopher Bell felt that winning the regular-season championship was attainable. He just needed a strong run.
But after winning the pole, Bell and his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team lost track position on pit road multiple times before crashing in the waning laps of the race. The 28-year-old from Norman, Oklahoma chalked up the late wreck as “trying to get too much and a mental mistake that cost me a bunch of points.” He finished the Crayon 301 in 29th, slipping 62 points behind teammate Martin Truex Jr. for the regular season lead.
Bell’s approach, however, has shifted ahead of Sunday’s HighPoint.com 400 at Pocono Raceway. He said that the chances of winning the regular are slipping with just six events remaining before the playoffs commence at Darlington Raceway in September.
“It’s definitely getting further out of sight that is for sure, but now it is just a matter of getting all we can. Whether that be second, third – whatever the case may be,” Bell said in a press conference Friday at Pocono. “We’ve had a couple of really – not a couple, several really poor finishes in a row here. It would be nice to get to the checkered flag without an incident. I think our performance is certainly capable of competing for it, but the way the last few weeks have gone, I don’t know if that is realistic anymore.
“Loudon is probably one of my best tracks and we didn’t get a good finish there. Certainly, I think every race track that we go to, we are capable of running well, and generally, we have been running well in the race – just not finishing well … If I can just execute restarts and get in position to have a solid finish where I don’t have to overdrive the car, I think we will be alright. I’ve done a really bad job behind the wheel the last couple of weeks at the end of the races on closing them out.”
(Photo: Sam Draiss | The Podium Finish)
Bell’s last three races have resulted in finishes of 18th or worse. He finished 18th at the Chicago Street Course after qualifying fourth and ended up 23rd at Atlanta Motor Speedway before the events at New Hampshire.
At third in points, Bell would be in a position to earn an additional eight playoffs to the seven that he has now from winning at Bristol Dirt and winning two stages. He holds a slim four-point advantage over teammate Denny Hamlin.
Bell is hoping that he can replicate the run that he had last year into the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway. After making the playoffs with a win at New Hampshire, he scored walk-off victories at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL and Martinsville Speedway to race for a title. However, he ultimately fell short of Joey Logano.
“The playoff schedule is really good for us,” Bell explained. “I think all of the tracks – minus Talladega, and I think a lot of drivers would be scared of Talladega to, but all of the tracks are really good for us, and the performance has been extremely well, and the cars have been really fast, but execution has really lacked and that is something that really scares me going into the Playoffs. We’ve got a month and a half here, six races or so to get it cleaned up, but if the Playoffs would be starting tomorrow, I would be worried about it.”
Bell now has multiple chances to turn his luck around this weekend. In addition to his Cup Series duties, he’ll run the Truck Series race with Hattori Racing Enterprises and the No. 61 entry. He won the 2017 truck race when he was full-time with Kyle Busch Motorsports.
In Cup, Bell has a pair of fourth-place finishes at the Tricky Triangle, including last year. He crossed the line sixth but got rewarded with a top five after Hamlin and former teammate Kyle Busch got disqualified in post-race inspection.
(Photo: Sam Draiss | The Podium Finish)
“Pocono is one of the tracks that the notes from last year should corollate pretty well, because it is the second time here with the same package,” Bell said. “The Toyota cars got a slight body change over the offseason, so we will just have to compare notes to what we did at the other intermediates, but the intermediates have been good for us, so it is definitely a track that we can definitely perform well at.
“The tunnel turn is really tough, and just the differences with turn one being really banked, turn three being really flat and then both of them leading to really long straightaways. It is a big compromise of trying to get your car to do what it needs to do for the driver to be comfortable. Last year, the JGR Camrys were really strong. I kind of found myself on the back half of the team with the 11 (Hamlin) and the 18 (Busch) running really well, and I was a little bit behind them. But I think that your car has to be really comfortable and stable at the speeds that you have here.
“It also has to turn really well, because if you are tight, you are not going to make any speed off of the corners. It’s a tough track that we generally see the guys who succeed here, they usually do well year-after-year and hopefully I can become one of those guys at some point.”
Sunday’s HighPoint.com 4o0 at Pocono is set for 2:30 p.m. ET on USA, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
