If you watched the Netflix docuseries “NASCAR: Full Speed” that dropped at the start of the year, Christopher Bell provided one of the most quotable moments.
The five-episode series was an in-depth look at the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series championship battle. For those working on the project, it made sense to try and plan around drivers that would be worth becoming invested in as ones likely to make a championship run.
Bell, straight-faced and looking at the camera when informed of that approach, said, “I wasn’t in that plan, was I?”
No, admittedly, he wasn’t. But the Joe Gibbs Racing driver ended up making a second straight run to the Championship 4 in the finale at Phoenix Raceway.
Hopefully, NASCAR, Netflix, and viewers are better prepared this year because Bell is on his way once again. Bell has smoothly advanced through the first two rounds of the postseason without much attention. Sunday, he started the Round of 8 from the pole and led 155 of 267 laps at Las Vegas Motor Speedway before finishing a disappointed second.
“It does (feel that way) a little bit but this time for good because we’ve just kind of been safe every (time),” Bell said before the round started about flying under the radar. “Going into Bristol, I don’t think we were locked in but we locked in rather quickly, had a lot of points in the bank. And then the same thing here in the Round of 12.
“So, we haven’t won, which has been a bummer, but we’ve done a really good job accumulating points and we’ve been above the cutline and on the safe side of things. So, I’m happy with that.”
Bell has quietly been the best driver in the postseason even without winning. The worst Bell has finished in seven postseason races is 14th at Watkins Glen. He’s been seventh or better in the other six races, which equates to an average finish of 5.71.
The driver who comes closest to Bell statistically is William Byron. The Hendrick Motorsports ace has five top-10 finishes in seven races and an average finish of 10.3.
“He’s scored a lot of points and has been really consistent,” Byron said of Bell. “It kind of reminds me of our playoff run last year where he has a sub-six average finish and lots of points scored. That’s kind of right where we were last year; we had a really consistent playoff stretch.
“He’s a great competitor, and as much as I’m looking at that, I’m not really paying attention to anybody but our team.”
Bell and Byron were two of the drivers who made up the Championship 4 last season. The third driver of that group was Byron’s teammate, Kyle Larson.
The 2021 Cup Series champion smiled and quickly said, “always” about Bell being overlooked. And Larson is just as guilty at times.
“I got asked the question last week, ‘Who’s the guy?’ or whatever, and I mentioned four or five people without mentioning Christopher,” Larson said. “He’s so good and just sneaky — very sneaky. Quiet good. That’s his personality, too. He’s just quiet and he’s not out talking about how good he’s doing. He’s just doing it.
“Him and his team are super strong and they’ve been doing a great job the last three years or whatever it’s been. I’ve raced with Christopher for so long that I know how good he is, and he is just a quiet, smooth person. A smooth racer, and for whatever reason, he’s flown under the radar his whole NASCAR career, I feel like.”
The ending is still to be written, but Bell has already put together a drama-filled season that would make a great movie. Or episode on the second season of the Netflix docuseries.
Bell won the third race of the season at Phoenix Raceway and then disappeared during the summer. By the All-Star Race break, Bell was 15th in the standings and knew his chance at the regular season championship were over. The team was searching for performance answers and Bell was as low as could be at the time.
A week after that was documented, Bell won two stages in the Coca-Cola 600 and the race. It started a stretch of five straight top-10 finishes, which included another victory at New Hampshire.
Incredibly, Bell finished the regular season inside the top five in points and was seeded second in the postseason. The 32 bonus points he earned came from three wins and 10 stage wins — eight of which he claimed from the Coke 600 through the end of the regular season.
“They kind of went through a rough patch during the course of the summer,” said Denny Hamlin, Bell’s teammate. “But they’d always have really good elite speed. A lot of the metric that I look at show that he’s one of the fastest when it comes to setting fast lap times and driver ratings. Things like that. Yeah, probably laying in the weeds is a good way to kind of summarize that [No.] 20 team and Christopher.
“But I think some of it also is his personality, right? He’s not outspoken that much. He’s pretty soft-spoken. Typically, people like that always fly under the radar. Matt Kenseth — I consider them very, very similar when I think about who Christopher is and I’ve worked with both of them. I feel like there’s a lot of Matt Kenseth in Christopher — both with their personalities and their talent level.”
It’s always been execution over attention for Bell, and that’s not to say he’s received no attention at all. But as the postseason has unfolded, the storylines have centered around many of the other contenders while Bell is steamrolling toward the title round.
“I feel like my team does an amazing job of stepping up to the plate whenever it matters the most,” Bell said. “I go back to April. April was an absolutely terrible month for us. We’ve been doing really good here the last couple of weeks.
“We need to take another step for sure if we want to be a Round of 4 contender. But I feel confident when we get to the Round of 8, we can do that.”