Bell sees his path to Cup Series title running through victory lane at Charlotte

Christopher Bell still believes he has a shot at winning the NASCAR Cup Series championship, but it would mean shifting from Chase-style racing back to a playoff-focused approach.

“After Darlington, Gateway, Bristol, speaking for myself and not my team, looking at how the deficit was, I was like, ‘We’re very much capable of pointing our way into it,’” Bell said of the title fight. “But now it kind of feels a little bit more like a playoff situation where you have that big bonus for race wins, and 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.”

NASCAR began awarding more points this year (55 total) for a race win when it re-implemented the Chase. The industry stressed that the emphasis on wins and rewarding race wins needed to show up more in the standings. It increased from the previous 40 points awarded for a win, with 35 then awarded for second place.

Bell earned that reward and saw the benefit when he won the first Chase race at Darlington. It jumped him and his Joe Gibbs Racing team from sixth in the standings, 50 points back, to second, only 12 behind.

But the last four races haven’t been as kind, and Bell is now third in the standings, 55 points back. In the last three races, Bell has gone from 17 behind to 50, and now to 55. As a result, he said after Sunday’s race in Las Vegas that he wasn’t thinking about it anymore and focused on racing.

Hence, the playoff attitude.

“It feels a little more like that … where I know, or I believe, that it’s going to take wins for me to become the champion just to utilize that win bonus compared to the competition,” Bell said. “I think I’m within striking distance of the (No.) 11 (Denny Hamlin) to where I can pass him without winning, but the (No.) 5 car (Kyle Larson) being out so far, I think it’s going to take wins. Yeah, we need to put our best foot forward to go out there and win.

“With that being said, the difference between the playoff format and where we are now is that there is a much larger backside penalty to pay if you make a mistake going for a win and end up crashing out and not scoring points. I can fall way deeper down the standings. So, you’ve got to really weigh out risk versus reward, but I think to close the gap that we have to the lead is going to take a couple of wins.”

Bell expects a very different race at CMS from the 600s he’s accustomed to in May. David Jensen/Getty Images

The fall event returns to the oval at Charlotte Motor Speedway this weekend, and it’s the last of a three-race stretch of intermediate races. Notably, Bell has never run a fall oval race at Charlotte, and although he expects a lot to carry over from the Coca-Cola 600, that lack of experience led him to joke that he is not the person to ask about it.

Bell did not become a full-time NASCAR national series driver until 2016, but the Craftsman Truck Series did not run a fall event at Charlotte then. The same was true in his 2017 Truck Series season, and when he moved to the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series a year later, it coincided with the debut of the Roval.

“On top of that, they said this is the first-ever 400-mile fall oval, too,” Bell said. “So, certainly there will be things that are different, and I think talking about strategy stuff, the stage lengths are a lot different than the spring race with the Coke 600 being four 100-lap stages, and now we’ve got our normal intermediate stuff.

“I think the biggest difference will be the intensity of the race. The Coke 600 has always been a survival race where guys race differently because it’s such a mental and physical grind, so there is a lot more give-and-take. This will be a normal intermediate race, and I expect the intensity to be higher.”

Bell couldn't be more ready for it, even if it’s all new for him.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “Charlotte has been one of my favorite intermediates – probably my favorite intermediate on the schedule – and it’s a shorter distance, which I like. So, the Coke 600 is a really special race, with it being a unique, very long marathon, and now we get a normal race at Charlotte that should be a lot of fun at a fun racetrack.”