Winning races is a drug of choice for every driver in the NASCAR Cup Series. Christopher Bell is someone who has had a big fill of that drug in recent times. He has kicked off his 2025 campaign with wins in Atlanta and the Circuit of the Americas. Looking back, there was a time when wins weren’t this frequent, but dominant races with a high number of laps led were.
Advertisement
Following his success in COTA, Bell was asked which he prefers: winning races or being the driver with the most laps led. Bell pointed out in his response that most of his wins before 2024 came without him leading laps. 2024 in many ways, was a turnaround year for him and the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team.
He detailed that it wasn’t until last year that he began controlling races and added, “In order to lead laps, the whole piece has to come together. You have to qualify well. You have to unload well. You have to have a great pit crew. We didn’t have all of those keys early on in my career until last year, where we finally put all the pieces together.”
Dominating a race doesn’t always result in wins. Kyle Busch, for instance, led 43 laps at COTA on Sunday. He finished in fifth place.
Bell summed things up: “It’s good to be able to win the races that you don’t lead laps. It sucks whenever you lead laps and don’t win, but that’s how it goes sometimes, and you have to look at the positives out of it.”
Will Bell make 2025 his year?
Two Championship 4 bids, in 2022 and 2023, ended in ruins for Bell. He was left with a bitter taste in his mouth after missing out on the finale last season. Standing up again from all the disappointment, the driver has no plans to give it up easily this time. He already has 10 massive playoff points in his pocket and 33 more races to go before the gates of Phoenix are knocked.
Eight months remain on the calendar for Bell and his team to go the distance that they have never been before. He told NASCAR.com, “Frankly, the last couple of years being at Joe Gibbs Racing in this No. 20 car, I haven’t been living up to the standards that I hold for myself. Our goal going into 2025 is to do that, or my goal is to do that for myself.”
Coming up next are races in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Homestead-Miami. If he can reach more victory lanes in at least one of these venues, he is bound to win four to six races throughout the year. That has been typical of Kyle Larson or William Byron in recent years. As things stand, Bell is the most perfect driver on the field.
