LAS VEGAS — Understandably, a lot of the main target throughout NASCAR’s tripleheader weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will fall squarely on Christopher Bell.
The driving force of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota will grow to be the primary driver since Jimmie Johnson in 2007 to win 4 straight NASCAR Cup Sequence races, if he’s first to the end line in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 Introduced by Jiffy Lube.
Bell feels his staff, headed by crew chief Adam Stevens, can win at any race observe. True sufficient, the 30-year-old from Norman, Okla., has claimed victory within the final three Cup Sequence races—on a drafting observe (Atlanta Motor Speedway), a street course (Circuit of The Americas) and a one-mile flat observe (Phoenix Raceway).
With these triumphs, Bell grew to become the primary driver to win three consecutive Cup Sequence races since NASCAR launched the Subsequent Gen automobile into its prime division in 2022.
Bell is certainly one of solely 4 drivers to win three of the primary races in a Cup Sequence season. The one driver to win 4 of the primary 5 was Invoice Elliott in 1992. Bell is also chargeable for Joe Gibbs Racing’s final 5 victories.
The Pennzoil 400 is the primary race of the season on a 1.5-mile intermediate speedway. In final 12 months’s Playoff race in Sin Metropolis, Bell led a race-high 155 laps earlier than ending second to Joey Logano by 0.662 seconds.
“Vegas is a real barometer of the intermediates,” Bell stated. “It’s form of just like the final model of observe that we haven’t been to but this season. It’s an necessary race as a result of you will have a whole lot of factors to be gained or misplaced on the intermediate-style tracks.
“However what makes Vegas much more necessary is that it’s within the Spherical of 8 (of the Playoffs). That race, while you come again within the fall, is tremendous necessary to have a very strong factors day and contend for a win. That fall Vegas race is every thing, and there’s no higher tune-up for it than the spring Vegas race.”
Certainly, Logano received final 12 months’s Playoff race at Las Vegas and used that as a springboard to his third sequence championship. It’s additionally secure to say that Logano could possibly be a significant obstacle to Bell’s quest for a fourth straight win.
Logano has received three of the final 10 races at LVMS. One other critical contender, Kyle Larson, has received three of the final eight. Just one Toyota driver has been to Victory Lane within the final 10 occasions on the observe—Bell’s JGR teammate Denny Hamlin within the fall race of 2021.
Larson received two Las Vegas races earlier than Logano triumphed final fall.
“Las Vegas has been a fantastic observe for us since I joined the No. 5 HendrickCars.com staff,” Larson stated. “We obtained our first win right here collectively, and we’ve added a pair extra since then.”
If Bell has been dwelling on the entrance of the sector, there are three drivers specifically who may use sturdy performances at Las Vegas to show their seasons round.
After 4 races, Brad Keselowski, Ty Gibbs and Cole Custer are thirty third, thirty fourth and thirty fifth within the Cup Sequence standings, respectively. By means of distinction, Johnson who completed third in his solely begin of the season (the Daytona 500), is thirty sixth, simply 13 factors behind Keselowski.
Las Vegas ought to go well with the co-owner/driver of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing. Keselowski has three victories at LVMS, together with 9 prime fives, and 13 prime 10s in 23 begins, with a median end of 12.7.
