Christopher Bell’s first NASCAR Cup Series starts have come during perhaps the most unusual stretch in the circuit’s history.
The 2020 NASCAR season has been unlike any in the auto racing circuit’s history. Drivers in the premier Cup Series have raced as often as three times in seven days as they provide a sports-starved nation enticing morsels in the midst of a health crisis. To adhere to social distancing mandates, drivers are often afforded little, if any, face-to-face time with their crews as they prepare their machines for race days. Grandstands have been kept empty save for a few lucky thousands invited to Cup events at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway (this month’s All-Star Race in Bristol is expected to welcome 30,000).
Now imagine making your first starts at the Cup Series in the midst of this chaos.
Such is the case for Christopher Bell, the rookie driver of the No. 95 Leavine Family Racing Toyota. Bell finished third in last season’s Xfinity Series rankings and won the 2017 Truck Series to earn his promotion. Most up-and-coming NASCAR stars, like Bell’s fellow Rookie of the Year candidates Tyler Reddick and John Hunter Nemechek, often race in a handful of Cup Series events before making their debuts, but Bell wasn’t afforded such a luxury. He made his debut in February’s Daytona 500 and remains, by far, the least experienced full-time driver on the entry list.
“It started off with a pretty crazy turn of events,” Bell remarked with a smile in a Friday morning conference call. “With Donald Trump coming to the Daytona 500 and getting rained out, racing on Monday and then all of a sudden we’re taking a hiatus or whatever it was. 2020 has been one to remember, that’s for sure.â€
Bell enjoyed the elite backing of Joe Gibbs Racing on the Xfinity circuit, but with their Cup stable full, he’s latched on to the mid-budget endeavors of LFR. The Texas-headquartered, family-owned squad is one of NASCAR’s few single-car teams, having regularly fielded the No. 95 since 2011. It has yet to visit victory lane, but gained speed over the years thanks to a technical alliance with Gibbs. Last season saw Matt DiBenedetto drive it to a team-best three top-five finishes, including a runner-up posting in the August race at Bristol.
The season’s opening saw Bell struggle to keep the momentum alive. A multi-car pileup on the penultimate regulation lap of his Daytona 500 debut set a foreboding pace to his Cup career before a slow day marred by postrace inspection penalties actually saw him leave Las Vegas Motor Speedway with negative points. By the time the Cup Series was forced into a two-month hiatus due to the ongoing health crisis after four race, Bell already had his first last-place finish under his belt (38th after an engine failure at Fontana) and sat a humbling 32nd-place in the standings.
He credited crew chief Jason Ratcliff for guiding him through the tough stretch. Ratcliff worked with Bell during top-five postings on the Xfinity level and won 14 races with Matt Kenseth in the No. 20 Toyota stall at JGR. The two earned 15 wins together in NASCAR’s AAA-baseball equivalent. Their seven in 2018 were good enough to set a record for an Xfinity Series rookie.
“Jason is obviously a guy that I have a lot of trust in,” Bell said. “He’s an A-caliber crew chief and I was fortunate enough to get my feet wet with him in the Xfinity side and I think that was kind of our goal was to train, I call it train, together in the Xfinity Series and get to know each other and get on the same page. It was all about making this transition to Cup. The first four weeks were a disaster, but it seems like we’re getting going and getting a lot better here recently.â€
When the series was able to resume in May, Bell got off to a solid start with an 11th-place posting at the second race back at Darlington Raceway before earning the first top ten of his career in his first start at another crown jewel, the marathon Coca-Cola 600. Since the return, Bell has tallied four top-tens overall and his first top-five, a fourth-place posting at the first half of a Pocono Raceway doubleheader on Saturday.
“Ever since the break, we’ve been able to come back to the race track and be pretty competitive,” he said. “I feel like the first four weeks were definitely disappointing, but after the break my team has been doing great, bringing a lot better race cars to the track and we’ve been able to capitalize on that.”
The efforts to race in a confined, timely manner haven’t afforded Bell the opportunity to try out his Cup car on the track. So-called racing gods have apparently been all-too-keen to further complicate his quest.
With qualifying wiped out, Bell and the rest of the field are at the mercy of random draws in determining the starting lineup. The top dozen in car owners’ points get the corresponding spots. The next 24 are then separated into equal pools while the final four round out the field. Bell’s brutal start has placed him in the third pool, which is awarded the 25th through 36th positions. Prior to the second half of the Pocono doubleheader, Bell had started 32nd or worse in five of the prior six races.
With the Sunday race lineup determined by inverting Saturday’s final order, Bell started 17th, which might as well been pole position based on his luck. However, disaster came on lap 39 of 140, when a crash ended his day early and relegated him to a 39th-place finish. NASCAR’s latest travels haven’t done any good toward Bell’s starting lineup luck, as he’ll start 36th for Sunday’s Big Machine Hand Sanitizer 400 Powered by Big Machine Records at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (4 p.m. ET, NBC). The No. 95 is 17 points behind Nemechek and his No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford for the final spot in the second pool (24th).
However, even as the lineup lottery fails to smile upon him, Bell is enjoying the change.
“Honestly, I’ve really enjoyed the no practice and no qualifying,” he said. “I feel like it fits what I’ve grown up doing and if you look at our performance, we’ve run exceptionally better since we stopped practicing for whatever reason that is. I really enjoy it.”
“As a rookie going to the race track, which my starting position, I’m not starting on the pole or the front row so I’m not having to go wide open into turn one and expect the car to stick or anything. I have enough time starting in the back that we’re able to just creep up on it and I feel like I’ve done a good job of not overstepping my limits and making sure I get to that first pit stop where we can tune the car to my liking and stuff like that.”
Time will tell where Cup Series endeavors take Bell. He’s impressing in LFR’s mid-budget ride thus far and has declared that he’d be interested to see where the car would be if not for their brutal luck in the early going.
But if this is what his rookie season is like, it’s certainly safe to say any post-yellow stripe campaigns should be a Sunday drive.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags