Christopher Bell has a busy weekend planned ahead of the Würth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway.
The driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry XSE will compete in a pair of Sprint Car racing events on Thursday and Friday, May 1-2. On Thursday, Bell will make his Kubota High Limit Racing debut in the No. 69k owned by National Sprint Car Hall of Fame inductee Don Kreitz, Jr. The following night, he’ll drive the No. 69k at Rocket Raceway Park in Petty, Texas with the POWRi Elite Outlaw 410 Sprint Car Series.
After that, the focus turns back to Texas Motor Speedway and its 1.5-mile oval for the NASCAR Cup Series Würth 400. Both his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry and the 410 Sprint Car will carry Interstate Batteries sponsorship this weekend in Texas.
“Racers race, and the more you race, the better you are,” said Bell. “You can go lift weights and run as much as you want, but being in that racing environment and focusing on the task at hand, it’s different – a lot different – and there’s no way you can prepare for it other than doing it.”
This NASCAR weekend serves as a home race for Bell, hailing from Norman, Oklahoma, as well as Interstate Batteries based in Dallas. He hopes to earn his first NASCAR Cup Series trophy from Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday.
“This is a big deal,” Bell said. “It’s a big race weekend for myself, my family and for Interstate Batteries. I would love nothing more than to get that first Texas Cup Series victory.”
In six prior starts at Texas, Bell has three top-five finishes. However, he also has three finishes outside the top-15, including a 17th-place finish at the Fort Worth, Texas venue last year.
“Texas, that one’s a tough cookie, man,” said Bell. “It’s just a very difficult track because of the way it’s shaped and the characteristics of it,” Bell said. “In turns three and four, there’s this one big bump, and it’s always been my Achilles’ heel. But over in turns one and two, you need your car to be really low to the ground. It’s a slower corner and there’s not as much load on the car.
“Texas is a place of compromising. You need to make sure you get your car to load in (turns) one and two so it carries speed all the way through the corner. But then when you get to (turns) three and four, it’s a lot faster, and you’ve got to be able to manage that big bump.”
Bell is a former winner at Texas in both the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. He believes his Sprint Car experience maximized his ablity to make those compromises, and hopes his Sprint Car efforts this weekend can parlay into more Texas success.
“You’re very rarely going to have a perfect car,” Bell said. “It’s the guys who can adapt to that the best and figure out how, if your car’s loose or if it’s tight, to run different lines and manipulate your car to do certain things. That’s all stuff that dirt track racing teaches you really well.”
While he is looking forward to two nights of Sprint Car racing, he will not take part in the second night of Kubota High Limit Racing at The Dirt Track at Texas on Saturday, May 3. Once he returns to Fort Worth on Saturday, his focus will exclusively be on the NASCAR Cup Series and Joe Gibbs Racing.
“I think it’s smart to run the sprint car Thursday and Friday, and then we’ll have Cup practice and qualifying on Saturday and we’ll be strictly focused on that,” Bell said. “I don’t want to interrupt my feel, my rhythm, when I get in the Cup car, and I want to make the most out of Sunday.
“I love sprint car racing, I love dirt track racing, and Texas is a very important race for me because I’ll have all my family members there. They’re excited about getting to see me do a little bit more racing. It should be a big crowd, lots of people. I’m just thankful that I have this opportunity and extremely glad to carry the Interstate Batteries colors all weekend long.”
FloRacing will broadcast the Kubota High Limit Sprint Car Stampede at The Dirt Track at Texas Motor Speedway, with coverage beginning at 7:15 p.m. ET on Thursday. Friday’s POWRi Elite Outlaw 410 Sprint Car Series event at Rocket Raceway Park is broadcast on RaceON, starting at 8 p.m. ET.
Sunday’s Würth 400 presented by LIQUI MOLY goes green at 3:30 p.m. ET with live coverage on FS1, the Performance Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
