FORT WORTH, Texas – When thinking about which drivers could be next in line to snag a Bill France Cup on their resumes, you don’t need to go far down the list to point out Christopher Bell and William Byron. But this year – the return of The Chase – could tell a different story.
The pair of perennial championship threats, who both made multiple Championship 4 appearances in the last four seasons, are off to sluggish starts in 2026. Between the one-third mark of the 2023 season through the duration of 2025, Byron spent 97 consecutive weeks inside the top 10 in points, including 47 weeks leading the series. He never dropped below third last year. Meanwhile, Bell, the always consistent Joe Gibbs Racing driver, has cracked the top five in the championship standings in each of the last four years.
Through 10 races in 2026, Bell has slipped to ninth in the regular-season championship standings. Meanwhile, Byron, who had a dreadful April, with a pair of finishes of 30th or worse, has plummeted to 11th. After the conclusion of five races, the No. 24 team has been outside the top 10 in points.
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“We just got to get going,” Byron said on Saturday morning at Texas Motor Speedway. “We’ve got to get to a normal style race track and reset from some of the weeks that we’ve had.”
Upon a 35th-place early exit at Talladega Superspeedway last weekend, Byron checked the point standings and had an honest conversation with himself. But between a putrid performance with a steering problem at Bristol Motor Speedway and being in the eye of the storm last weekend at the 2.66-mile oval, he tallied a mere nine points total in two of the last three events.
“It was a bit of a shock coming out of Talladega seeing how far we had fallen in the points,” Byron stated. “Two out of three weeks, not a lot of points. Just have to reset.
“When you look at The Chase format, it sets up well if you can be in the top 10, really. Look at how many points you can gain or lose in 10 weeks. It’s about trying to get to that part of the season, but you’ve got to get there by being competitive. Just being able to have weeks where we can be a contending car and that’s going to give us confidence that we can gain points.”
The performance of the No. 20 team has been strong in 2026, leading 303 laps, third-best in Cup. The finishes tell a different story, however, with a 40% top-10 percentage.
The last two weekends, specifically, have been gut-wrenching. He was well positioned for a top-five finish in overtime at Kansas before contact with eventual race winner Tyler Reddick on the penultimate lap cut a tire, dropping him to 20th in the finishing order. He followed that up at Talladega by contending for a top 10 and was in the middle of a multi-car incident yards away from the finish, crediting him with a 17th-place finish.
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“It’s so painful,” Bell said of his late-race madness the last two weeks. “I don’t know that I’ve had a stretch like that where – they always say, ‘Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,’ but jeez.
“I feel optimistic that it’s going to turn around at some point.”
Like Byron, Bell has noticed himself glancing at the points more frequently in 2026. And even though he’s ninth in the standings, the No. 20 team ranks less than a full race – 54 points – behind third-place Ryan Blaney. Any shot at catching Tyler Reddick, who has a 110-point buffer over second place alone, he believes, is out of the question.
“It’s a bummer where we’re at,” Bell noted. “On the positive side, we’ve gotten terrible finishes and are within striking distance – not of the Regular Season Championship – but hopefully of the big picture, full-season championship, we are still in position.”