Christopher Bell went bust in the last two NASCAR Cup Series playoff races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but the Joe Gibbs Racing driver believes eventually his number will come up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely feel confidence and positivity every time [I think] of Vegas,\u201d Bell said. \u201cEven though I haven\u2019t won here, and I\u2019ve had a lot of races get away between the two Cup races, the last two, and through the Xfinity years and the Truck years. I have zero wins at Las Vegas, but it\u2019s always been a really, really strong track for me, and we\u2019ve performed really well.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I would say I\u2019m excited about coming here every time, and I think one of these days we\u2019re going to get rewarded.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bell and the No. 20 team were the class of the field in the 2023 and \u201924 postseason races at Las Vegas. Not only did he start from the pole in both, he led a combined 216 laps. In both races, Bell and his team were snookered by a fellow playoff driver and finished second, missing out on securing a spot in the Championship 4.<\/p>\n
Kyle Larson beat Bell in 2023. Larson came off pit road with the lead under a caution with 57 laps to go. Bell lost control of the race when Larson did, as he came off pit road third. Although Bell made a run at Larson in the final laps, he was unable to make the pass. Bell won a week later, however, to clinch his championship spot.<\/p>\n
A year ago in Las Vegas, Joey Logano and Team Penske made a fuel mileage gamble work at the expense of Bell. He then failed to advance into the championship round after it came down to a battle with William Byron in the elimination race at Martinsville Speedway. Bell was penalized post-race when NASCAR ruled that he rode the wall on the final lap, and the final transfer spot went to Byron.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the track owes us one,\u201d Bell said. \u201cBut certainly, driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, I have great cars whenever we come here, and hopefully, if I can continue to drive well, I\u2019ll pick up a win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saturday, Bell qualified third for the South Point 400.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the one that we have circled,\u201d Bell said. \u201cWe know this is a great opportunity for us to have a good day and score some points. Our intermediate package is really good from Kansas, a couple of weeks ago, and even Bristol, where we run the same rules package. It seems like everything is going right for us at Joe Gibbs Racing. Our teammates have been really good.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we know this is a big opportunity and hopefully we can capitalize on it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christopher Bell went bust in the last two NASCAR Cup Series playoff races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":295955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-295954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115358352588518935","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}