James Small knew what was going on when he saw Christopher Bell slowly see on Pit Road in Las Vegas

Concord, NC – While crew chief Adam Stevens told Christopher Bell to find a teammate’s pit stall to pull a loose wheel on the number 20 car during last weekend’s race in Las Vegas, how much warning had the crew head James Small, would the bell stop in the Putstall of his team?

No.

No warning was needed.

“If you are off at the end of Pit Road (near Pit Exit), we only had an agreement for years that if someone goes to your pit box, you know what to do,” Small told NBC Sports on Tuesday after the first of a two -day tire test on Charlotte car Speedway.

The first five races provided a variety of storylines for this season.

Small, Chase Briscoe crew, delayed Bell on Pit Road and knew Bell’s plan. Bell avoided traffic on Pit Road and entered Briscoe’s pit stall.

“I could see that Bell was trying to get to our box and I’m as if he should have a loose wheel,” Small said. “He came in and he showed and I got on our car radio and started screaming: ‘Left front! Left front! ”

Briscoe, who was under the warning on the track, said he was shocked when he heard little shouting on the radio over the left front band and thought it was something wrong with his car. After Bell left Briscoe’s pit stall, Briscoe was told what had happened.

It was ingenious, really – and thought well.

Small said Joe Gibbs Racing’s teams talked about the fact that a teammate has to pull in another’s pit to get stuck a wheel “now for many years and this is just the first time it happened.”

If Bell was back on track and the loose front band came off the left, he would have been penalized two rounds and suspended two pit crew members for the next two weeks – the team of Briscoe’s team and Kyle Busch’s team had in Las Vegas.

But by letting Briscoe’s team pull the loose wheel, Bell was penalized only because he hit outside his stall. It sent him to the back of the field for the restart.

The company sponsors Denny Hamlin’s car in 18 races this season, starting this weekend’s event on Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“When I saw it, my initial reaction was really smart to do what they did,” Ryan Blaney told NBC Sports. “Honestly, we’ve had discussions about it over the past few years.”

When Bell walked down the pit road on the track, he had William Byron next to him on the inside of the track, at least briefly.

“It was strange, because I was like ‘Okay, I would feel like I would chase him off Pit Road and then he started delaying,’ Byron said during the band test on Tuesday. “When we talked about what happened, I was as if it was beautiful to expect it, and of course they talked about it in the past.”