Christopher Bell walked into Victory Lane a year ago, arriving before his car when the Coca-Cola 600 was called due to rain.
So began an up-and-down 12 months that sees Bell return to Charlotte Motor Speedway after his first All-Star Race win last weekend and looking to defend his Coke 600 title this weekend.
Only Kyle Larson has won more Cup races than Bell since last year’s 600. Larson has seven victories. Bell has five points wins and the All-Star triumph.
But Bell and his Joe Gibbs Racing team also went winless in the final 18 races of last year and missed making the Championship 4 after he had made the race in 2022 and 2023. He said last year that he felt “cheated” by Chevrolet teams that he said “fixed and manipulated” the finish of the Martinsville playoff race, preventing him from making the Championship 4 a third consecutive year.
He’s rebounded to win three of the first 12 points races this season.
The past year also has seen growth from Bell and his No. 20 team.
“In the last 12 months, I do feel like I’ve done a great job at maturing as a driver and finishing races off, where throughout the early part of my career and really not even just NASCAR, like even going back to dirt track races, my achilles heel was I would beat myself at certain times,” Bell said after his All-Star Race win.
“Really the last 12 months, (crew chief) Adam (Stevens) has been on me hard about just making sure that I beat that tendency. And I don’t think you’ll completely beat it, but I have been able to see myself mature in that stage of just taking what’s coming to us and getting to the checkered flag, and that really shows this last two months or so.”
That maturation, Bell said, wasn’t as much of a factor in his late-race duel with Joey Logano to win the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro but in other situations this season.
“If I have pace in my car, I have done well at finishing races off,” Bell said. “It’s whenever I’m the one that’s falling back or I have the slower car, I would get myself in trouble, I would spin out, I would hit the wall, I would wreck trying to overextend myself whenever it wasn’t my day.
“Certainly the last couple at Texas and Kansas and Darlington, those races are the ones that come to my head.”
Bell finished second at Kansas, third at Darlington and ninth at Texas.
He was strong early in the season, winning at Atlanta, Circuit of the Americas and Phoenix in consecutive weekends.
The key was taking advantage of particular situations in those races.
“Last year we just weren’t able to capitalize the second half, maybe last two-thirds of the season,” Stevens said. “There were a tremendous number of races where we had race-winning speed, and for whatever reason, a lot of them didn’t work out.
“You have to go through the calendar individually to pick them all apart, and that’s frustrating when you’re in the middle of it. You want to win, and Bell wants to win immensely. So it’s frustrating for myself. It’s frustrating for the team. Our conversion rate was low. And this year our conversion rate has been extremely high on top of being competitive.
Building on his success this weekend at Charlotte also will have challenges.
“I’ve definitely been surprised about just lacking pace on the intermediate tracks, like at the end of last year, we did really well at the intermediates, and was one of the strongest contenders, and then the last couple of weeks, week-in and week-out, we just haven’t been there yet,” Bell said.
“Hopefully, we make gains on it. I feel like Kansas was a little bit better than what we had at Texas and Darlington, so if we can make another step like that going into Charlotte, maybe we will be contending for the win, but we are definitely lacking a little bit at this point in time.”
