LAS VEGAS — Christopher Bell entered Sunday as the driver everyone focused on to make history at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Instead, it was the sport’s most historically active team, Wood Brothers Racing, stealing the show with Josh Berry capturing his first career victory and the 101st for the storied organization, while Bell settled for a 12th-place finish.
“I’m just really trying to soak this all in, honestly,” Berry said. “I’m trying to take my time with everything and really enjoy this moment.”
Bell could understand what Berry was feeling, as Bell has had his own career moment over the last few weeks in winning back-to-back-to-back Cup races. But Bell wasn’t much of a factor all race, a day when he started at the rear of the field because the team had to change a throttle body after qualifying on Saturday. It turns out that his qualifying position of 13th was an unlucky 13 in Vegas.
He worked his way through the field, only to have to go to the rear again when his team left a lug nut loose. Quick-thinking crew chief Adam Stevens told Berry as he left the pit stall that if he saw a teammate’s pit stall, to drive in it and that crew will tighten it. Berry did, but he was penalized to restart at the rear of the field for pitting outside of his assigned pit box.
“I knew we were going to lose at some point,” Bell said. “You’re not going to win them all. But just the execution was not good on all fronts.
“The last three weeks, we did really well and it won us three races. And then today, it just didn’t go our way. We had to start in the back and then a pit-road mishap, bad restarts, struggling with the balance and you have a 12th-place day.”
Bell, amazingly, didn’t enter the race as the points leader, as Daytona 500 winner William Byron had accumulated more stage points. And those points — combined with Bell’s wrecking at the end of Daytona — put Byron ahead of Bell. Byron finished fourth on Sunday, so he now leads Bell by 29 points.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver remains the only one with multiple wins this season (Atlanta, Circuit of the Americas and Phoenix).
“The points format is really cool the way that it is because it rewards running well throughout the entire race,” Bell said prior to the race Sunday. “I’ve gotten great finishes and won the races, but at Atlanta, I led one lap and at COTA, I led nine laps.
“The car that I’m racing — William Bryon — has scored more stage points than me. I’m content with the point system and understand the reason why I’m not leading the points is because I haven’t scored stage points. I think it will sort itself out once we get more races into the regular season, where the cream will rise to the top and the guys who score the most points will be at the front.”
Bell did weave through the field to finish 10th in the opening stage Sunday. Byron wasn’t in the top 10 in the first stage but was second in the second stage. And by that time, Bell was trying to rally from the pit-road miscue that helped keep from being worse.
Drivers don’t usually have the wherewithal to stop in a teammates’ box.
“I didn’t know if that whenever I got to any of the teammate’s box, I didn’t know where they were, and then if there was going to be a car in it or not,” Bell said. “And then I saw the 19 [of Chase Briscoe’s box] out of the corner of my eye.”
Among the dicey moments as he attempted to drive through the field (again), Bell had a four-wide moment where Ryan Blaney ended up spinning.
“They were right off my right-rear corner so I didn’t see anything other than just in my mirror. I was the last one that kind of made it through there,” Bell said.
That was possibly some good fortune on a day where he didn’t have much.
“It was just a bummer,” Bell said. “I thought that the performance in the car wasn’t what held us back. We got in position there in Stage 2 before the pit-road mishap. I struggled on restarts whenever I was in the back of the pack, and you’re working on your car to get it to turn better with no downforce on it.
“And then whenever I got cycled back up front, I was just really loose at the end. I feel like if we didn’t have the pit-road mishap, we would have been in contention and would have had a shot at it. But just going to the back to the front so many times, we just didn’t have it.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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