Despite winning the last two NASCAR Cup Series events in succession, Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell believes that modern-day NASCAR does not facilitate repeat winners week in and week out.
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With the #20 Toyota Camry XSE driver’s wins at Atlanta Motor Speedway and the Circuit of the Americas, the Oklahoma native managed to break the longest drought in Cup Series history without a back-to-back winner in the sport.
As astonishing as that may sound, Bell had his views as to how and why repeat winners in the Next Gen era is something that depends on the schedule as well.
“I think the schedule has something to do with it. Adding another superspeedway in the fold with Atlanta. The road courses, there is more now than what there was in the past, but with the superspeedway stuff and the Next Gen car leveling the playing field, there’s a lot of competitive cars now,” he elaborated.
Christopher Bell wins at Circuit of the Americas, his 2nd win in a row.
He becomes the first driver to win back-to-back races since Chris Buescher at Richmond and Michigan in 2023, ending the longest run without one in Cup Series HISTORY. pic.twitter.com/ZM3K9fvwdq
— NASCAR Insights (@NASCARInsights) March 3, 2025
Touching on how the mixed-up nature of the schedule these days helps drivers take advantage of uncertain situations, coupled with the parity the seventh-generation Cup car has bought in, is what helps different winners emerge every weekend.
Bell also touched on how clear favorites in the sport, as there once used to be in the form of drivers such as Kevin Harvick or Kyle Busch, do not exist in 2025, again largely owing to the nature of the car and the diversity of the schedule.
What does Chris Buescher make of Bell’s theory?
Fellow Cup Series competitor and RFK Racing driver Buescher also zeroed in on the near-equal machinery drivers have today. The Next Gen car, after its introduction in 2022, has developed in such a way that while it offers great levels of parity in the sport, drivers who can figure out how to drive it can excel, as proven by Shane van Gisbergen, amongst other road course ringers.
“I would say mostly due to the parity of the race cars. We’ve seen this over and over, right, is you look at the number of winners we have as we head into the year, towards the end of the year. It’s harder to consistently keep an advantage over the field,” opined Buescher. The #17 Ford Mustang driver also touched on the same thought that Christopher Bell did, with the schedule also playing a part in it all.
“The fact that the schedule is as crazy as it was at the beginning of this season. One was a race last week where they (Bell and team) were really good the entire race. Then I think of Atlanta, we were back there struggling to make laps at the beginning of that race with the 20 car,” he added.
With Phoenix Raceway upcoming, it remains to be seen which team and driver can handle it best this Sunday. After all, the 1-mile-long venue has not seen the best of the Next Gen’s performance over the last two seasons.
