“I’ve Got to Walk the Walk”: Christopher Bell on Being Under the Radar Despite Impressive NASCAR Record

When you think of some of the best drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series today, Christopher Bell‘s name rarely comes to mind. Yet with eight wins to his name in the competition, he has the makings of a future champion. Being overlooked by fans is never easy for any athlete and after winning the Coke 600, the Joe Gibbs Racing star hopes to earn more victories and become a more talked-about race car driver.

It had been a frustrating few weeks for the driver of the #20 car who had not won a race in nine weeks before Sunday. That kind of form is not good enough for someone who wants to win six or seven races in a season. Bell believes that his sporadic race wins need to come more frequently before fans start taking him seriously as a consistent challenger for the championship.

“Today hopefully shows that we have the capability and I hate talking the talk and not being able to walk the walk behind it but I know, my team knows, and my company knows…Toyota knows we have the capability to be a factor week in week out, it just hasn’t come together yet. So yeah, I got to walk the walk now,” he said after the race in Charlotte.

The driver of the #20 car had previously spoken about him not being popular with the fans like some of his competitors and pinned the blame on not having shown his personality enough.

When Christopher Bell tried to open up to the fans

Bell mostly lets his racing do the talking as he is quite reserved in his media interactions. There were signs of him coming out of his shell in the Netflix series and it was a conscious effort on his part to make fans see that he deserves their attention a lot more often.

“I haven’t been very good at showing my personality, who I am, to the general public. So, yeah. Whenever I got the opportunity to be on the Netflix show I tried to open up as much as I could. I just hope that we’re able to keep it going and keep the momentum going,” he had said in an earlier interview.

At the end of the day, his driving will have to be of the highest level for fans to notice him but having an outward personality is always going to help gain attention.