Christopher Bell dispels the notion that he should have punted Kyle Larson out of the way to win last weekend’s Cup playoff race at Las Vegas.
Bell closed on Larson in the final laps before losing by 82-thousandths of a second.
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Bell lamented not winning the race and the “golden ticket” that would have sent him to the championship race for a second consecutive year. Instead, he is two points below the cutline and faced questions about why he didn’t do more to Larson to win the race.
“Whenever I got out of the car, I genuinely didn’t know what other moves I could have made to win the race,” Bell said this week. “I’m not going to blatantly wreck somebody — and I don’t even think I really had the opportunity to blatantly wreck him. It’s not like I lifted coming to the checkered flag. I didn’t lift off the accelerator, and I didn’t pile drive him, so my run wasn’t massive
“Certainly if the 38 car (of Todd Gilliland) wasn’t on the bottom, I think I probably could have gone to the inside and maybe gotten alongside of (Larson), but even at that, I don’t know that I would have cleared him.”
Bell said the situation reminds him of what he says is one of only about five movies he’s ever seen. Bell notes the movie “Sully,” which starred Tom Hanks as Capt. Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who landed a commercial plane in the Hudson River in New York and saved all 155 aboard.
“You know it honestly reminds me a little bit of ‘Sully’ the movie where everybody is just critiquing Sully and telling him he should have done this, he should have done that,” Bell said. “He’s like, ‘Look man, this is real life, in the moment, this was my decision.’ Where I was at in the moment, I chose what I chose and I did what I did. If I had 18 opportunities of it, maybe I would have won the race, but I had one opportunity in a split-second decision and I didn’t win the race.”
Highlights: NASCAR Cup playoffs at Las Vegas
Watch extended highlights from the NASCAR Cup Series South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Immediately after exiting his car on the frontstretch, Larson praised Bell’s actions on the final lap.
“Thankfully Christopher always races extremely clean,” Larson said. “Could have got crazier than it did coming to the start/finish line. Thank you to him for racing with respect there.”
The result kept Bell as the only remaining playoff driver without multiple victories this season. His lone win came in April at the Bristol Dirt Race.
By finishing second last weekend, Bell finds himself two points behind Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin for the final transfer spot going into Sunday’s Round of 8 playoff race at Homestead-Miami Speedway (coverage begins at 2 p.m. ET on NBC).
But Bell is not counting points with two races left in the round.
“From my standpoint, I view all three of these races (in the Round of 8) as basically must-wins,” he said.
Bell, though, does not have the best record at Homestead. His best finish there in Cup is eighth in three races. He also had only one top-10 finish in three Xfinity starts at the 1.5-mile track in South Florida.
“I wish it was another track, I’ll be honest with you,” Bell said of this weekend’s race. “I do wish that we were going to a handful of other racetracks. But with that being said, Homestead is certainly a place where you can control your own destiny. If you go there and you’re fast, you’re going to have a great day. If you go there and you’re slow, you’re going to have a really bad day.
“My track record there is full of ups and downs. So it’s not my most confident track.”
Bell made the title race last year after winning the final two cut-off races in the playoffs, so he knows anything is possible.
“We’re going to have to duplicate what we did at Las Vegas at Homestead, and we’re going to have to duplicate it again at Martinsville if we want to make Phoenix,” Bell said. “Frankly, if I’m a championship driver and we’re a championship team, we need to be doing that anyway.
“I felt like that was our moment (at Las Vegas) to make the final four. It was a moment to make the final four, but I don’t think it was the only moment to make the final four.”
