A broken wrist hasn’t seemed to slow Christopher Bell down at all.
Bell continues to recover from injuries sustained in a horrible wreck at Michigan International Speedway in June, but now, sans a cast on his left wrist, the Norman, Oklahoma-native has been able to lay down some solid performances as of late, highlighted by a second-place run Sunday at Chicagoland.
The runner-up result comes just one week after finishing inside the top-five on the road course of Sonoma Raceway.
This week, though, the driver of the No. 20 Saia LTL Freight Toyota Camry XSE was in the midst of the fight for the win but just couldn’t find his way around Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) teammate Chase Briscoe in the final laps, after chasing the eventual race-winner down by more than five seconds during the last run.
Thus, Bell had to settle for a fourth runner-up finish of 2026. So, what did the 31-year-old driver need to get himself back in Victory Lane?
“Just track position,” Bell explained post-race. “He was out front and had the lead and threw a couple good blocks on me and that’s all she wrote. Him and Drew [Herring, spotter] do really good at blocking and the race was on the line. He knew that I knew that, just, I didn’t get it done.”
It’s been an interesting year for Bell, a perennial race-winner in the NASCAR Cup Series, between some dramatically bad luck and some near-misses. Toyota Racing USA and Joe Gibbs Racing have both been lights-out fast, but the deal hasn’t been able to be closed by Bell, and then, of course, there’s the recent setback from his injury at Michigan.
“It’s just disappointing to continue losing races,” Bell added. “We’ve lost them every way possible, and just, I’m not good enough. The cars are amazing. I’m the fastest car a lot, Toyota is great, and I’m not winning the races, just not good enough.”
This battle for the victory with Bell came after some adversity early in the race, when the Joe Gibbs Racing driver made contact on pit road with Todd Gilliland, damaging the front-end of the No. 20. However, Adam Stevens was able to get the car repaired and put him back in contention for the win.
“I was really struggling with the handling of my car early on in the race, and I still had a lot of pace, so I keyed up the radio and said, ‘Hey, if we get this thing driving good, we’re going to have a shot at it’. They made a great adjustment and got the car driving great the last run, but I was a straightaway plus behind, it seemed like.”
“We almost went to Victory Lane. Yeah, Toyotas are fast. It seems like a monkey can drive them, so it’s just disappointing when you get beat by another monkey.”
Bell was right. Toyota was fast. In fact, the first time during the organization’s tenure in the NASCAR Cup Series, the automaker put SEVEN drivers inside the top-10 – Chase Briscoe, Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, Bubba Wallace, Ty Gibbs, Corey Heim, and Riley Herbst.
