AUSTIN, Texas — Christopher Bell may not have a “message to send” to anyone in the NASCAR Cup Series garage after achieving back-to-back wins in the first three races of the season, but he’s certainly carrying a new mentality to make 2025 his year.
After two Championship 4 bids ended in heartbreak for the Norman, Oklahoma native in 2022 and 2023 — and a sour taste in his mouth after missing out last year — Bell and the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team have no plans to leave their title bid up to chance this season.
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Now sitting fourth in driver standings with 10 valuable playoff points already in hand and 33 more races on the docket before the Cup Series rolls into Phoenix on Nov. 2 to crown a champion, the sky is the absolute limit for Bell and Co. to assert their dominance over the next eight months and continue to stack wins more often than they ever had.
It also doesn’t hurt that Bell has hit a stroke of good fortune at two tracks where anyone could’ve snatched a playoff bid. Plus, he feels that he’s already collecting wins that he could’ve had in 2024, especially at Circuit of The Americas — where he hounded Byron for the win but left with a runner-up result. This year, the roles were reversed.
“The last two weeks at Atlanta and here, I kind of won without the fastest car, so it’s really nice to get those back that I lost last year,” Bell said after the race. “I’m excited about what’s to come. We have high expectations and high hopes and goals for this year. Frankly, the last couple of years being at Joe Gibbs Racing in this No. 20 car, I haven’t been living up to the standards that I hold for myself. Our goal going into 2025 is to do that, or my goal is to do that for myself. I know, Adam Stevens, he feels the same way. He feels that we’re capable of a lot of great things. We haven’t done that yet in the Cup Series season. Maybe 2025 will be the year.”
The last three seasons for Bell resulted in successful multi-win campaigns, but with Phoenix, Las Vegas and Homestead lined up as the next three events — Bell earning wins on two of those tracks and incredible performances on the other — it certainly feels like Bell could burst for a dominant four-to-six win-type season we’ve seen from the likes of Kyle Larson and William Byron at the Hendrick Motorsports operation in recent years.
Plus, Bell has shown tremendous speed and a clutch gene at critical playoff tracks, which are vital if the No. 20 team wants to hoist the Bill France Cup in November.
“It’s amazing to be sitting here with more importantly than two wins, 10 playoff bonus points. We’re in a pretty good spot right now, and hopefully, we can go into race tracks that are really good for us,” Bell said. “With Phoenix being the championship event and Vegas being in the Round of 8, they’re two race tracks where you have to be good at if you are going to compete for a championship. Everyone knows that.
“Everyone is going to be bringing their best stuff trying to see where they stack up and taking notes, taking notes for how it goes and how to be better in the fall.”
Stevens, Bell’s crew chief since the start of 2021, also thinks that this could be the season the No. 20 team can achieve something special. He expects his crew to prepare the car as being the one to beat every week going forward after back-to-back triumphs.
“There’s no reason we can’t go win the next two weeks,” Stevens affirmed. “Today has no bearing on next week whatsoever, and everybody is going to bring their best stuff and do their best job, but I really have so much faith in this team and Joe Gibbs Racing as a whole, and especially my driver, that I know we’ll be a factor.”
Luckily for Bell and Stevens, they enter Phoenix (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) next week as the defending winners, making a legitimate case for an early season trifecta of victories. And after a season that left the No. 20 team feeling like more was desired, there’s certainly a message from top to bottom to not let 2025 slip and to stay ahead of the competition.
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“We have everything we need to win every single weekend. That’s certainly at Phoenix and certainly at Vegas,” Stevens added. “We have proven that this weekend. So there’s no reason why we can’t go and compete, and we did leave a lot on the table as a 20 team for sure and as an organization last year. We don’t have any plans of repeating that, and I think that we’ve made a lot of good decisions on our team and Joe Gibbs Racing as a whole to make sure we don’t.”
It’s certainly a marathon season, and with three wild-card tracks now in the blinders, the cream will rise to the top over the next few months. But with Bell already pocketing two wins and some of his best tracks still ahead of him, it already feels like the rest of the garage is chasing the proven Cup Series star.