Christopher Bell dominated at Nashville Superspeedway, sweeping both stages of the Ally 400 and leading a race-high 131 laps.
However, when Chase Elliott spun early in the third stage, Bell’s crew chief Adam Stevens elected to come down pit road for four tires and fuel, leaving him outside the top ten for the restart on lap 228.
Battling in a pack of cars heading into Turn 1, Bell got caught in the dirty air behind the No. 42 of John Hunter Nemechek and overdrove the corner, causing his No. 20 Toyota to break loose, and Bell ultimately spun by himself into the outside wall to bring out the caution. Unable to continue with the damage, Bell ultimately finished 36th.
Bell acknowledged that he was at fault for the incident, driving too hard trying to get back to the front of the field.
“I just put myself in a pretty bad spot going into turn one,” he explained. “I got bottled up there and just lost my cool to make something happen and I put myself in a bad spot and spun out.”
While Nashville ended up being a race to forget, Bell can walk away knowing he sits in very comfortable Playoff position by virtue of his three wins, with his position strengthened even further by Playoff points from those two stage wins. Bell won the week prior at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, also leading the race high number of laps that time.
“I mean, it’s disappointing, but there’s a lot to be positive about,” Bell admitted. “We won two stages, so we got more Playoff points which is really good. Yeah, and the performance of our team is doing really well, so hopefully we can keep the ball rolling and I think we can win a lot more races.”
It’s not the first time Bell has crashed out of a good performance. In last year’s championship finale at Phoenix Raceway, Bell wrecked from sixth after losing a brake rotor, taking him out of the race. As a Championship 4 contender that year, the damage which took him out of the race was especially heartbreaking. Bell’s shown similar speed to last year, and he’ll be hoping to get his heartbreak out of the way before the Playoffs.
