Adam Stevens sounded nonchalant about the call that kept his driver, Christopher Bell, from losing a wheel Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s something we’ve talked about.”
That something was having Bell stop in another pit box and get the wheel tightened. Stevens made the heads-up call under a lap 108 caution. The No. 20 team finished their pit stop and Bell was leaving pit road when Stevens told him to stop in someone’s box. Bell’s spotter, Stevie Reeves, also got on the radio and told Bell to stop in someone’s box.
As Bell worked his way left toward a pit box, Stevens was back on the radio about tightening the left-side wheels. It turned out that Bell was looking for a teammate’s pit box and got to Chase Briscoe’s. The No. 19 team tightened the left front wheel on Bells’s car, and Bell returned to the race.
“We’re allowed to do that,” Stevens said. “And obviously, being pitted as far back [as we were] is something that we’ve talked about before, so it happened.”
It was a move rarely, if ever, seen before in Cup Series competition and took many by surprise. It was also impressive how quick thinking it was.
“Yep,” Stevens said. “Hopefully, we don’t have to do that too many times.”
The move is allowed since it is a safety issue. NASCAR would hope a potential wheel issue is addressed on pit road, if possible, rather than have the wheel come detached on the racetrack.
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However, there was still a penalty involved. Bell lost his track position with the extended time on pit road and was called for pitting outside his pit box because another team serviced his car.
Bell’s day was finished either way. He was running second at the time of the caution when the incident occurred, and the lost track position hindered his chances for the remainder of the afternoon.
The team was chasing its fourth consecutive victory but finished 12th after Bell had come from the rear of the field at the start after the throttle body in his car was changed before the race.
“It was tough,” Stevens said. “Starting in the back is never fun, but man, we got all the way up there to P2. You can’t go to the back once you start in the back and have much of a better finish than what we had, to be completely honest with you, without some high-level circumstance.
“We had some good fortune there early in the race when that caution came in the green flag cycle and got us a chunk of track position, and once we restarted in the top 10, he drove right up there and was running the [No.] 5 down. We felt and we thought it was going to be a good day. At least (we’d) be in contention. Once we had that loose wheel, it was going to take something — a miracle — for us to be racing for the win at that point.”