Christopher Bell Talks Power Then Shows Plenty Of It

For Christopher Bell, more horsepower means right direction for racing

Christopher Bell is so enamored of NASCAR’s new short-track competition package that he’d like to see a trial run with the higher-horsepower configuration at a 1.5-mile intermediate speedway.

Bell won’t get his wish in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 Presented by Jiffy Lube at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (4 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), but he’ll get a taste of what the performance might be like when the NASCAR Cup Series moves to 1.366-mile Darlington Raceway a week later.

Bell finished second last Sunday at one-mile Phoenix Raceway and left with glowing accolades for the 750-horsepower, lower-downforce package in use at tracks shorter than 1.5 miles.

“I’m surprised by it, because I would have thought Phoenix was one of the race tracks that it really wasn’t going be able to tell the difference,” Bell said on Saturday morning at Las Vegas. “I can promise you that, if we’re feeling it at Phoenix, just wait till we get to Martinsville and Richmond, and on top of that, Darlington.

“But Darlington, it’s going to be a much greater change at Darlington because of the downforce package and the rules package that we’re taking there, so we’re getting more horsepower and less car potential. So, I think it’s going to be a massive difference in Darlington.

“And then, with what we’ve already found out at Phoenix, I love where we’re headed. I always think that we can use more, and I would love to get more horsepower, and hopefully this is an indication that we’re turning the right knob, and I think sky’s the limit. If we continue to add horsepower, I think we’re going to get right to where we need to be.”

Bell won last year’s spring race at Phoenix. Though he finished second to Ryan Blaney last Sunday, he thought the new short-track package produced the best racing the track has seen in the era of the Gen 7 Cup car and before.

“I thought Phoenix was night-and-day different than what we’ve had the last, well, since we’ve started going there,” Bell said. “It’s been really hard to pass, and this race was the first race I felt like you could actually make your way through the field if you had a better car.

“I proved that; Ryan Blaney proved that, it seemed like. If you had a better car, you were able to pass, and I think a lot of that was due to the horsepower, and the added horsepower made the track feel slick. The tires degraded. We were sliding around, and the best cars made their way to the front.

“I think Darlington is going to be more of the same.”

If Bell wanted proof that speed still talks louder than theory, he got it Saturday — backing up his horsepower sermon by blasting to the pole at Las Vegas.

With a blistering lap at 187.156 mph in Saturday’s time trials at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Christopher Bell claimed the pole position for Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 Presented by Jiffy Lube (4 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Bell navigated the 1.5-mile intermediate track in 28.853 seconds to beat Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin (186.188 mph) for the top starting spot by 0.150 seconds.

The Busch Light pole award was Bell’s first of the season, his fourth at Las Vegas and the 15th of his career.

With JGR’s Ty Gibbs qualifying third at 185.803 mph and 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace fourth at 185.771 mph, Toyota swept the top four starting spots in a race for the seventh time in the manufacturer’s history in the NASCAR Cup Series, with the previous most recent occurrence coming at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last year.

This was the second straight Las Vegas race in which Toyotas have started 1-2-3, with Hamlin, Chase Briscoe and Bell doing the honors in qualifying last fall.

“It was pretty simple, really,” Bell said of his qualifying lap. “It takes a lot of commitment here at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to qualify well. My team got their Ps and Qs right. We had a lot of grip, and I held my foot down, and we won the pole.”

Bell’s car seemed unbothered by the troublesome Turn 1 bumps that upset the efforts of more than a few other competitors.

“It’s a compromise,” Bell explained. “Every time you come to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, it’s a compromise of getting your car to have as much grip as you can have in (Turns) 3 and 4 without the bump hindering you in (Turns) 1 and 2.

“Anytime you make the car drive better across the bumps, you’re giving up performance on the smooth part of the race track, and my team nailed it.”

Reigning series champion Kyle Larson (185.54 8mph) qualified fifth in the fastest Chevrolet, with Phoenix winner Ryan Blaney (185.185 mph) claiming the sixth spot on the grid in the top Ford.

Series leader Tyler Reddick, winner of the first three races this season, will start seventh, followed by Ryan Preece, William Byron and Chris Buescher.

Defending race winner Josh Berry qualified 32nd in the Wood Brothers Racing Ford.

Note: The last seven times Bell has won a NASCAR Cup Series pole, he has finished the race in the top 10. His last two Las Vegas poles (2023 and 2024) have resulted in second-place finishes.

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