Christopher Bell knows he was in a no-win scenario last week in the NASCAR event at Chicago but it especially stung because it was two years in a row that he arguably should have won the street race and came away with nothing to show for it.
In 2024, Bell was leading the race at the end of the second stage on a damp track, taking slicks but lost the race because Alex Bowman stayed out on treads and won, while Bell was caught up in a crash trying to drive his way through the top-10.
He was as frustrated as he has ever looked at the Cup Series level, declining post-race comment and leaving as soon as he changed out of his fire suit. He was as frustrated as he looked too.
“Oh my gosh, man, that was the most frustrated and defeated I had felt in a long time,” Bell said. “Two years in a row, feeling like we were in position to win the race, and have it taken away from us was a bummer but you’ll have that in big time auto racing.
“I’m really happy with the way NASCAR played the daylight clock, I guess we’ll call it, and thought it was fair for everyone. The circumstances of the track drying and the strategy of when to take the (slicks) unfortunately no matter what we did, if stayed out pit, people were going to pit behind us and we definitely would have lost. With us pitting, people decided to stay out behind us and it still looked like it was going to work out if we hadn’t got caught up in that wreck.”
That’s how Stevens viewed it too.
“We had to jump it because everybody could have come at the stage and you’d be behind them all,” Stevens said. “So, we saw a bunch of them pit with three to go right. And that kind of forced our hand with two to go being the leader.
“We really felt like you were going to have to have slicks to win the race. The two things that hurt us were that caution, that that cut down laps, green flag laps for us to run. And obviously if the whole race runs under caution, which was a possibility, then you’re not going to win. And if it runs green, we’re probably going to win.
“Even if we got through that little skirmish there without wrecking our suspension, we were clearly ahead of (Reddick) and (Gibbs) so we needed two things to go wrong to not win and they both went wrong.”
Despite the disappointment of Chicago, Bell remains one of the hottest drivers in the division with two wins over the past seven races, four of them seeing the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 7 lead the most laps.
“Just figuring out what I need in the cars and getting the most out of it that we can,” Bell said of what’s changed. “Over the past two years, our car’s potential has been good but getting the balance right is up or down.
“It seems like we’re now honing-in on what I need in the car and tracks that were our weakness have turned into strengths. Nashville was a huge building block for us because I wasn’t very good there in 2022 and 2023 and were really good there this year. Pocono, I’m optimistic about it because we’ve done a really good job of taking our bad tracks and making them good tracks.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.