TOYOTA RACING – Christopher Bell
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
DARLINGTON, SC (March 21, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell was made available to the media on Saturday prior to the NASCAR Cup Series race from Darlington Raceway.
CHRISTOPHER BELL, No. 20 DEWALT Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
No. 19 Sport Clips Haircuts Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
When drivers change teams, do you think drivers race their former teammates any differently?
“I don’t think so. I’m honestly trying to think back to, even whenever I came into the 20 car, and Erik Jones went to the 43. I thought Erik raced me really respectfully. I haven’t noticed that and I didn’t get to see the incident or I wasn’t around Daniel (Suarez) or Ross (Chastain) at all last week. So, yeah, I don’t have anything for you there.”
Are there any races where it is more difficult to run double-duty or triple-duty?
“Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely certain tracks that are a lot more physical than others. The physical tracks on the schedule would be Dover, even Bristol, but Darlington, it is not too bad. You have some decent straightaways to get some rest. The speeds are down; the G-forces are down. The biggest thing about Darlington is it’s just mentally taxing. Like you have to be mentally switched on the entire time because you get no off laps. You’re right up against the wall and any sort of mistakes are going to damage your car and likely jeopardize your potential to run well. I think most of us don’t really get the opportunity to pick where we run double, and triple duty. It’s more so about the teams and where they want you to drive at. I’ve been doing the O’Reilly Series race here for a number of years now with Sport Clips, and then it came together with Pristine Auction to do the truck race as well. It’s more so on the team’s deciding where I’m going to run or where the drivers are going to run compared to the drivers deciding where they want to do it at.”
What makes the Cup practice so important this weekend?
“Yeah, well, certainly learning from that group A. It’s nice that we’re in group B, so we get to watch. So, we’ll have a good idea of what the tire degradation is going be and how slick it is and how different the cars drive. So all of us are going to be tuned in to that group A for sure, all the group B drivers and teams are going to be glued to those monitors, watching, see what the guys are struggling with, what the tire deg is, what the balance migration is, and then making adjustments on their cars for the group B session. So, once you get on track, you kind of go to focusing on, on what you’re doing in that moment and even if it does go a certain direction, really loose or really tight, or a lot of, a lot of tire deg, a little tire deg – I don’t think it’s going to be a little tire deg – but, it’s, yeah, watching group A is going to be a huge, huge part of practice and hitting your adjustments because this is so foreign. The last time that we had a rules package change like this, we had an open practice at Phoenix, I think. So, it’s going to be tremendously different than what we’ve had, and I would expect there to be a lot of field spread between the best cars and the worst cars.”
Do you feel like tomorrow’s race will live up to the hype?
“The potential to crash by yourself is going to be much greater than what we’ve had in previous Darlington races, but honestly, thinking back to it, like the harder that we make the cars to drive, it seems like everybody becomes more heightened and focused on driving their car well and we typically see less crashes. I don’t know that it’s going to be a crash fest, but, yeah, I think everybody at this point is just speculating. Like nobody truly knows what’s going to happen. Whenever we get out there with, you know, this aero package and upped horsepower. Even after the practice session, we’ll know a little bit of what the tire deg is and how the cars drive, but we won’t know how they race, and I think that’s where hopefully we make the biggest gains is even if the cars drive differently, hopefully they drive better in traffic. We’re able to pass better and ultimately, we see a better race because of that, and, with the Phoenix being the higher horsepower stuff, it seemed like we could pass tremendously better. I would expect Darlington to be a place where we can pass a lot easier too.”
Is there a point of the season where you feel like you need to be in the top three or you will begin to panic?
“Definitely not before the reset. The Chase reset is what we’re all focused on is trying to get that best seeding position going into the Chase. Someone could run away with the regular season and then get bumped back down closer to the field at the Chase, or it could be a really tight points battle and then they could get an advantage at the Chase reset. So, right now, it’s definitely way too early to be talking about the runaway stuff. I think that Chase reset could go either way. It could give the leader an advantage and more of a buffer or you could bring him back closer to us. So, for us and the 20 team, I think we’ve focused on just trying to be in that top 5 in the regular season standings, at one time, I didn’t think we were ever going to get there after the first two races being that far back, but the points have worked out. We’ve run really well in the stages and the guys that are winning races are able to make up a lot of positions and a lot of points with those added points to the win. So, yeah, if we can start winning races, who knows, maybe the regular season championship isn’t out of out of the hunt, but right now we’re right where we want to be, and, we feel like we’re in great contention still for the championship.”
Has there been a former teammate that you didn’t get along with and how did you handle that situation?
“Yeah, fortunately, I haven’t ever been in that position. I’ve certainly had run-ins with competitors, but my style is if you have a confrontation, like just have a conversation about it and be able to move, move past it, put it behind you. A lot of the people that I’ve had run-ins with or I think right now, all of the people that I’ve had run-ins with, like I’m on pretty good standings with all of them. I feel like I’m in a pretty good spot right now.”
Do you keep a mental tally or write something down on people that you’ve had run-ins throughout the years?
“No, I mean, you certainly, I think if someone wrongs you enough, then you understand that going into the next time that you’re around them, but like I said, if I make a mistake and get into somebody, I’m going to reach out to them and apologize and have a conversation with them and let them know, however they take it, at least they know that I wasn’t willfully trying to take them out of the event. If it’s something that’s not bad at all, if you don’t even think about it whenever you’re on track, but then, the more it is, the more that you think about it whenever you’re on track.”
Is there anything you looked at after Las Vegas after your disappointment with your performance?
“I don’t think that anything that happened at Las Vegas will repeat at Darlington because the tracks race very differently, but certainly going back and learning from what transpired at Las Vegas and just understanding that next time that we go to that style of track, which will be more like a Kansas, and knowing how I didn’t get control of the race. I restarted on the front several times and feel like my race would have looked a lot different had I been able to get control of the event and get out in clean air and lead the race. When you’re side by side, whoever breaks that bubble and gets out front will lead a bunch of laps and look like the best car for a period of time, and unfortunately for me, I never won the starts and never won the restarts, so we never got control of the race. Certainly trying to go back and look at the events that transpired, all of the moves, the side drafts – it really is a side drafting game, so understanding that. I don’t think it’ll transpire to Darlington, but certainly the next mile and a half or normal intermediate.”
You did a great job with your commentating in Las Vegas. Would you like to be in the High Limit booth more often?
“Wow, thank you. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I don’t know when the next time I’ll get that opportunity, but yeah, I certainly enjoyed it.”
How do you manage tires here?
“We’ll certainly learn more about the strategy piece whenever we get into practice and, like I mentioned before, nobody has any idea, it’s all speculation on what the tire degradation is going to be and what that means for the strategy on Sunday. But, how do you save tires? I don’t know. I didn’t do it very well last night. That was my Achilles heel so hopefully I can save tires better today and tomorrow. I’m still looking for that magic answer if anyone else has it.”
What has been working this year with you leading so many laps?
“Well, that was a big thing that we focused on in the off season was getting back to leading laps. A lot of the stats last year mirrored my previous seasons, except for that laps led column, and that’s a really, really important piece because it shows car potential. It shows speed. We did well at the beginning of the year last year, and then we tapered off, mid-season, and we still got great finishes, but we weren’t able to lead the races and show that we had the best car because we didn’t have the best car. So, certainly this year, we’ve been off to a great start, to go to Phoenix and Vegas and have the races that we did, makes me super excited about the potential of our group, and I feel like we’re performing better now than what we did at the end of 2025, which is really good.”
Is it going to be more important to keep your car out of the fence this weekend?
“Yeah, these cars are so funny because they’re very robust in some ways, and they’re very fragile in, in other ways. Darlington is a place where you can hit the wall 10 times and get away with it, and then all of a sudden you just barely kiss the wall, and you get the wheel at the wrong angle, and you bend the tow link, and it ruins your day. I can promise you all of us are focused on staying off the wall. I would say that the O’Reilly cars are probably the most robust for getting against the wall because you don’t have that tow link and you can really lean on it and get away with it, but the Cup cars, you can get away with it all the way until you can’t. All of us are going hit the wall at some point and someone is going to have the unlucky touch of bending that tow link and then you’ve got a long day ahead of you. So yeah, they are very finicky race cars.”
How different of a race is it going to be?
“The last couple years since 2022, the race has become more and more and more predictable, as people understand, the Next Gen car. We’ve been on the same rules package, the same tire now for a long time at Darlington and the race has become very predictable where we know how it’s going to, how it’s going to turn out. I think this is a great change. I mentioned last week at Vegas that I would love to see this rules package implemented at all the racetracks. I think change is good for the sport. I think it’s good to keep the drivers and the crews on their toes and trying to see who can figure it out the quickest. So, I’m excited about it. I think that the race will look drastically different this time than last time.”
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