Christopher Bell is excited by his dirty races, ready to get back into the Nascar Cup car

Christopher Bell couldn’t stop smiling when he competed at Tulsa Shootout and Chili Bowl Nationals last month, after Joe Gibbs Racing Rules over his drivers outside Nascar.

And Bell still smiles as he enters the cup season, starts with the Cook Out collision of Sunday night at Bowman Gray Stadium.

“Finally ready to get back into my cubing car,” Bell said this week.

Tim Brown, the winning manager at Bowman Gray Stadium, gets a chance to compete in a cermot for the first time in his career.

The new Nascar season -which starts on Saturday with practice, qualifying and heat racing at Bowman Gray Stadium -puts the end of the last year further behind Bell, which said last November He feels ‘cheated’ from a chance to compete for the championship at Phoenix.

It goes back to the Martinsville play -off match when William Byron disappeared in the last rounds, but fellow chevrolet cars did not succeed, which allowed him to hold the final transfer spot to the title race. After that happened, Bubba Wallace delayed and Bell came to him for a position, but he still needed more cars to catch up with Byron for the last transfer spot. Bell ran into the last corner against the wall to try to pass additional cars.

About 30 minutes to the finish, Nascar announced that he had punished Bell for a safety offense To deliberately ride the wall. There were no penalties to Byron, which allowed him to take the final place in the Championship 4. Bell just missed to make his third consecutive championship 4.

Since then, Nascar has updated its rulebook to allow it to punish manufacturers for such offenses and to change the wording in its rule on performance obligations to “manipulate the outcome”.

“I like the rule change and go from the 100% rule to change the wording to manipulation,” Bell said. “Hopefully, if Nascar sees one of the shenanigans going on, they’re going to make a call in the heat of the moment to fix it. That’s all I can ask for. “

The Prerace exhibition moves to a short track in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Bell said he had entered this season after his recent racing in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was a three-time winner of the Chili Bowl, and he did not compete in the case in 2023 and ’24 because of the JGR rules that the drivers could limit outside the NASCAR.

After riding a race car this year, he said, ‘Make me feel a little more confident. I would say it is small, but definitely refreshing to be behind the wheel. Probably more than anything, it helps me to keep a better mental state than not to drive throughout the outdoor season. ‘

Bell is entering this year as the most recent winner for Joe Gibbs Racing, but the win took place in New Hampshire last June. JGR is entering a winless line of 18 races this season.

There are 39 cars searching for 23 places in the function race at Bowman Gray Stadium.

After the season, JGR Chris Gabehart has shifted from Denny Hamlin’s crew head to competition director. Bell said Gabehart has been busy since the move last November.

“I’ve had a lot with him, lots of phone calls, many conversations, which I haven’t had a conversation with someone outside my 20 team, (crew head) Adam (Stevens) – each every now and then I would with Michael Guttilla (JGR industry chief) talk, ”Bell said. ‘But (Gabehart) seems to be doing a very good job of organizing the teams and making sure we are all on our way together.

‘… I’ve always had the utmost respect for Chris Gabehart. I felt that he was an incredible crew head, super smart individual and I am excited about his new role because I think it can help the 20 car specifically and help the company to reach the business where all four of our cars perform better. “