Don’t count Christopher Bell out just yet.
Bell won three races in a row early last season, which means the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 team is certainly capable of a similar run over the final five weeks, and doing so again could be the difference in the Chase for the Championship.
Bell suffered a catastrophic loss of power steering on Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and finished 23rd. On the other hand, Bell finished each stage second and third, minimizing the overall points lost to championship leader Kyle Larson.
He is 55 points back.
“It took me a little bit to recover for sure,” Bell said of driving in the second half with power steering. “On Monday, just my shoulders. My shoulders and my hands really were the big things that hurt just from gripping the wheel a lot harder than I’m used to, and then obviously the effort that it took to turn the car through the corners.
“But yeah, I mean, it was disheartening to have an opportunity taken away from us like that. It was just a parts failure. It was nobody’s fault. It was a part that had been tested, and I believe that it was a part that nobody had an issue with in the past. So yeah, I don’t know what else to say.”
Bell is still recovering from a broken wrist sustained during a crash in June at Michigan International Speedway. He said he is ‘thankful’ this didn’t happen closer to his injury because he doesn’t know that he could have finished the race.
“But thankfully my wrist has healed a lot since then and my wrist was not the limiting factor,” Bell said. “So yeah, like I said, my hands really hurt just from the grip of the steering wheel. My arms were really fatigued from trying to, I guess, turn as much as I could, but I couldn’t turn it very much.
“It was just a matter of using the camber and the caster and the setup on the car to make the corner. And thankfully we had a great setup.”
On the other hand, the result cost Bell about 15 points, that would have left him around 40 points behind Larson and more or less tied with teammate Denny Hamlin for second. That could ultimately prove the difference is Bell does catch some momentum and a break from Larson.
Bell says he feels like he is in a deficit that makes him feel like it is the previous playoff format, where he is in a must-win scenario.
“Aside from race wins, I don’t think you’re going to make up a 50 point deficit without that win bonus that is applied now,” Bell said. “So it feels a little bit more like the playoff format where I believe that it’s going to take wins from me in order to become the champion just to utilize that win bonus compared to the competition.”
To be fair, winning two times in five races is how Larson got to the championship lead. That kind of surprised Bell.
“I think it just comes down to the win bonus and nobody knew how big of an impact that win bonus was going to have throughout the regular season,” Bell said. “And then once again into The Chase where everyone at the beginning of the year said you had to be what, top-four to top-six in the standings going into it to have a shot.”
Larson started the Chase as the seventh seed.
“He got to the lead pretty early just because he was able to win races,” Bell said. “So yeah, I mean the win bonus is a really, really big deal and if you can capitalize on it, you can make up a lot of ground.
“So I think that’s the reason why that number is skewed and why I said if you got 400 points throughout the 10 races, you’re going to be the champion and it’s not looking like that’s going to be the case.”
So from his standpoint, at 55 out, Bell isn’t counting points. He just wants to go out and try to win races.
“So at this point, honestly, I’m just going to go out there and race,” Bell said. “And I know that it’s going to take wins to close the gap. And yeah, I mean, we’ve been in position to win a couple of them after Darlington and it hasn’t happened yet.
“So just got to go out there and race. And I love and am thankful that I still have a shot at it. I’m still in contention, but certainly it’s going to take wins and we’ve got great opportunities to win coming up, so I wouldn’t write myself out of it yet.”
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