For three weeks in a row, Christopher Bell was on top of his game. He started the year off with three wins in the first four races and was looking for a fourth in Vegas. But a 12th-place finish is just the start of a weekend that didn’t end his or his team’s way at all.
Bell showed speed at the start of the race by climbing from his 13th-place starting position to tenth by the end of Stage 1, and he was running second on track by lap 108. However, the worst was yet to come when he pitted under caution and the crew failed to tighten the left-side tires.
Bell’s team reacted quickly, getting him to stop in teammate Chase Briscoe’s pitbox so Briscoe’s crew could tighten the wheels. The decision kept the wheel from coming off on track, a penalty of multiple laps and suspension for the crewchief, but Bell was still penalized for the move and made to go to the tail end of the field for pitting outside his pitbox.
Despite some major adjustments by his team as the race went on, Bell was never able to recover the track position and ended up finishing 12th. It was a disappointing end to his effort to go for four in a row.
“I mean, just – I don’t know. It’s fine,” a clearly disappointed Bell said. “I was a grind today for sure. I don’t really know how I feel yet, but we certainly didn’t do what we did the last couple of weeks and that was just have a nice clean race.”
The biggest heartbreak for Bell was the fact that his car was certainly fast enough to contend for the win, as he showed by running up in second and chasing down the leader before the caution came out and his problems started.
“I think the Interstate Camry was definitely capable of competing for the win when we were at our best but just going to the back and to the front and to the back and to the front, we just didn’t get a handle on the balance, because it changes so much from being back there. I felt like we were in position in stage two to contend for another win, but it got away from us.”
The bad day for Bell unfortunately matched the outlook for his entire Joe Gibbs Racing outfit. The rest of the team’s luck was somehow even worse.
For Denny Hamlin, his luck on the slot machines did not translate to the racetrack. Trouble started in the first pit cycle when Hamlin came down pit road just ahead of the caution coming out, getting trapped a lap down, and picked up a speeding penalty. He made his way back on the lead lap with a free pass early in the second stage and made his way up to contend with the leaders in the final stage.
However, once again, Hamlin pitted in the middle of the third stage shortly before a caution came out. This time he was only trapped at the back of the pack, but he never managed to climb up any higher than 25th where he finished.
The cause of the first caution that put Hamlin a lap down was misfortune for his own teammate, as Chase Briscoe had a wheel come off while on the racetrack. That earned him a two-lap penalty and put him a deficit all race. Briscoe nevertheless managed to finish up in 17th after getting the free pass back onto the lead lap in the final stage.
Finally, Ty Gibbs never had the speed, though his team made improvements throughout the race. He qualified in 29th of 36 cars and went down a lap in the first stage on pace. After getting the free pass, he moved up to 26th in Stage 2 and finished the race in 22nd.
On the whole, it’s a weekend the entire Joe Gibbs Racing team will be happy to forget: quite a departure from the optimism coming into the race of fighting for four in a row.
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