RELATED: Race results
William Byron continued his record-setting ways Saturday afternoon at Pocono Raceway, but teammate Christopher Bell made his own bit of NASCAR Camping World Truck Series history with an unconventional comeback.
A deluge of caution periods helped the 21-year-old Bell storm from five laps down after early misfortune to post an unlikely 10th-place finish in Saturday’s Pocono Mountains 150. Bell was the beneficiary in each of the final five yellow flags to snag a lead-lap finish and set a series record for free passes.
“I’ll take a record any way I can get ’em,” said Bell, who rallied for his fifth consecutive top-10 finish.
Bell was scheduled to start fifth but faced an early deficit before the drop of the green flag, pitting his Kyle Busch Motorsports No. 4 Toyota during the pace laps with what a team spokesperson called a low-voltage issue. He was forced to start at the rear of the 32-truck field after the unapproved pre-race adjustment.
He lost more ground with his involvement in the race’s third caution, crashing in Turn 2 with John Wes Townley on the 16th of 60 laps, setting off an unfortunate chain of events and repairs before his mammoth comeback.
“I had no idea. I was just kind of going through the motions and doing what I was told on the radio and just kind of along for the ride,” Bell said of his methodical rally. “The next thing you know, we get the truck back out there and the fenders aren’t clearanced right, then we cut a right-rear tire. That was under the green flag so then we just sat there on pit road and (crew chief) Jerry (Baxter) made the call to just sit there and make it right. By the time we got going, we were five laps down, just out there trying to log laps.”
The seemingly insurmountable gap was closed with the help of five caution periods in the final 31 laps. With each unfurling of the yellow flag, Bell was directed by race control to pass the field under caution to make up a lap.
“The next thing you know, there’s a yellow: ‘Hey we’re the lucky dog, come on around,’ ” Bell said. “Then hey, there’s another yellow, come on around. By the end of the day, the last yellow put us on the lead lap and we were able to capitalize on it. To come out of here with a top 10 was remarkable for us.”