Christopher Bell fell short of netting a fourth consecutive NASCAR Cup Series win Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, finishing 12th.
Entering Sunday’s race, Bell dropped to the rear of the field after the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team elected to change a throttle body ahead of the event.
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In Stage 1, Bell worked his way to a 10th-place result to a net a point but it was downhill from there.
Climbing as high as second, Bell had a handful of issues on pit road. Stopping for service under yellow, Bell’s crew didn’t get the left front wheel tight before the 30-year-old drove away. Crew chief Adam Stevens quickly caught it, instructing Bell to pull into the No. 19 pit box to tighten the wheel. The No. 20 team got hit with a penalty for pitting outside of the box, an infraction much less severe than if the wheel fell off on track.
With Bell mired in traffic the rest of the race, he wasn’t able to muster that same Stage 1 pace to get back to the front.
“It was a grind today for sure,” Bell said. “I don’t really know how I feel yet, but we certainly didn’t do what we did the last couple of weeks and that was just have a nice clean race. I think the Interstate Camry was definitely capable of competing for the win when we were at our best, but just going to the back and to the front and to the back and to the front, we just didn’t get a handle on the balance, because it changes so much from being back there.”
Bell will look to make it four wins in five races next Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway (3 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where he won in 2023 to make the Championship 4.