Bristol win helps, but Bell still wants more for a championship push

Christopher Bell doesn’t deny that winning in the NASCAR Cup Series cures all, but only momentarily.

Bell, of course, is the most recent winner in the series, having closed out the Round of 16 a week ago with a victory at Bristol Motor Speedway. It solidified his spot in the second round of the postseason and put his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team back on the scoreboard for the first time since March. But it didn’t solve the biggest issues Bell believes the team has to fix.

“Certainly, winning helps,” Bell said Saturday morning at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “But we didn’t lead laps. Once again, I won a race, but I didn’t lead laps, which is okay. I will gladly take that. But last week was such a unique (set of) circumstances. We kind of won the lottery last week, and whoever won that race was going to have to have a substantial amount of luck, and fortunately, it was on our side.

“But I don’t know. We had a great car, but I think a lot of people would have said the same thing, and we got really fortunate last week. It was kind of a unique circumstance that played out. So, I don’t know that it necessarily was a true test of where teams stack up.”

Bristol was another excessive tire wear race and it unexpectedly forced teams into tire management mode early in the night.

The ability to lead laps, in addition to winning races, has been something Bell has hammered on in recent weeks. Although his car has had speed, Bell has compared himself to his teammates, particularly Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe, who have been excelling in both areas.

Briscoe leads the point standings with two race wins and five stage wins, whereas Hamlin sits in third place with five race wins and four stage wins. Bell is fourth in the point standings with four race wins and two stage wins.

In the first round of the postseason, Briscoe led 451 laps and Hamlin led 90 laps. Bell led 14.

“What we have to do better is qualify better,” Bell said, explaining how his team can win the championship. “That is mission critical, oh my goodness. All of us are frustrated a little bit with how we’ve been qualifying, especially compared to our team cars. I say that because the team cars are the barometer, and if your team cars are qualifying well, then you should be qualifying well, too. Through the summer months, we couldn’t even put it in the top 10, and we’ve made gains on our qualifying performance, and now it seems like we can consistently put it in the top 10. But our teammates are consistently putting it on the front row.

“When you get deeper in the playoffs, you have to be scoring stage points, and a lot of the stage points are dictated by your qualifying effort. So, that’s mission critical. We’ve got to start qualifying better, and along the lines of qualifying better, that’s how you lead laps. I think a lot of it stems from qualifying, and that’s probably the biggest performance gain that we need to go out there and be one of the top contenders. I think our race performance has been on par with most of our competitors; it’s just that we’re starting from a hole after Saturday.”

As a whole, Joe Gibbs Racing, according to Bell, is feeling pretty good after sweeping the first round. It has asserted the organization as the powerhouse team in the sport right now and early championship favorites, although there is still plenty of racing left to go.

“We’re loving life, absolutely,” Bell said. “We know we’re in a good spot and we’re just trying to keep the ball rolling. It’s a week-by-week basis, and the schedule certainly lays out really well for the Toyotas to run well for a little bit here, and hopefully we can do that. But we’re all super happy and thrilled with how it’s going.”