Christopher Bell felt his gold ticket to the championship race slipped through his fingers last weekend in Las Vegas when he could do nothing but chase Kyle Larson across the finish line.
Bell, although gracious in defeat, took the loss hard. Aside from wrecking Larson, which wasn’t an option Bell was willing to use, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver felt he did all he could to grab the victory. But it was just the first race in the round – Bell still has two chances to earn a return trip to the Championship 4, even if it didn’t sound like it with his outlook on Homestead-Miami Speedway.
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“I wish it was another track, I’ll be honest with you,” Bell said this week. “I do wish we were going to a handful of other racetracks. But with that being said, Homestead is certainly a place where you can control your own destiny, and if you go there and you’re fast, you’re going to have a great day. If you go there and you’re slow, you’re going to have a really bad day.
“My track record there is full of ups and downs, so it’s not my most confident track, but it’s a great racetrack. It’s a place where, if you’re fast, you can control your own destiny. We just have to be fast and if we’re not fast, we don’t deserve to be going to the final four. So, it is what it is.”
Bell has three NASCAR Cup series starts at Homestead-Miami Speedway with a best finish of eighth from the 2020 season. His average finish is 13th with four laps led.
The numbers are similar for Bell from his time in the Xfinity series and Craftsman Truck series at the track: an average finish of 17.3 in the Xfinity series with a best finish of fifth from 2019. It was an 11.7 average finish for Bell in his three Truck series races at the 1.5-miler in south Florida, finishing a best eighth in 2016.
In the third round of the postseason, Bell views each race as a must-win. And if that doesn’t happen, a driver better be taking all the points possible.
Bell came close in Las Vegas, scoring 52 of 60 possible points. He and Larson were the class of the field, but it was Larson who clinched a spot competing for the championship.
“The reason why I felt like that was my moment was because going into the race, we had a great Saturday, we won the pole, I passed the 5 car early on in the race and ran in front of him for a period of time,” Bell said. “So, we had everything we needed to go out there and win the race and you never know what’s going to happen and certainly, my opportunity to make the final four is not over by any means, but that was a golden ticket that was a car length away from me, and it didn’t happen.
“I know that if I want to make Phoenix, I’m going to have to basically win at Homestead and Martinsville. If everything goes normal.
“Now, certainly, if people have issues, then it can be dramatically different, but we’re going to have to duplicate what we did at Las Vegas at Homestead and again at Martinsville.
“Frankly, if I’m a championship driver and we’re a championship team, we need to be doing anyway. So, I guess I felt like that was our moment to make the final four, and it was a moment to make the final four, but I don’t think that it was the only moment to make the final four.”
Bell is two points below the Cup series playoff grid going into Homestead (Sunday, 2:30 p.m. ET, NBC).