Christopher Bell arrives at Talladega sitting third in the standings, holding a 15-point buffer above the cutline. Yet his previous track record at the superspeedway shows that it has rarely worked in his favor, something he’ll look to change this Sunday.
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In 11 starts, Bell has cracked the top five just once and the top 10 only three times. To make matters worse, two of his last three Talladega appearances have ended with his car in the wall.
Earlier this spring, Bell’s bid for redemption ended in the blink of an eye. After starting 11th, the No. 20 driver was battling for the lead with Chris Buescher when a poorly timed push from teammate Denny Hamlin sent him spinning down the backstretch. The impact with the inside wall ended Bell’s race, and Buescher was caught up in the wreck as collateral damage.
Now, despite carrying an average finish of 20.9 at Talladega, Bell knows exactly what’s at stake and the line he’ll need to walk.
“So the thing is about Talladega, it sounds great on paper: ‘Hey, we’re going to run up front. We’re going to score all the points…’ But out of the three Super Speedway races that we’ve had this year, two times I’ve been wrecked out from the front row. So, the safe play is to definitely ride around in the back, and try and survive, get through the carnage, and then race at the end,” Bell said.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver knows, though, that the so-called “safe play” can be a double-edged sword. “But there’s two things to that. Number one, if you’re in the back, you have to go to the front at some point. So, you are putting a lot of risk on yourself whenever you try and go back through that pack.”
“And then number two, you’re giving up a lot of points through the stages. So, it’s going to be a lot of cat and mouse, I think, between the competitors who are points racing against each other,” he added.
Bell also acknowledged that the risks differ for everyone in the field. With Ryan Blaney sitting 31 points below the cutline, Bell expects him to throw caution to the wind in a must-win scenario. Bell feels he’s going to be all in for a race win, so he’s not going to be worried about the point standings and trying to get those stage points.
Meanwhile, the #20 driver’s own priority is stage points. With William Byron, Chase Briscoe, and others breathing down his neck, he knows that every lap will count in the fight to stay above the cutline.
