Nothing is guaranteed: Christopher Bell all-in for Martinsville win while chasing magic number

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Entering Sunday’s Round of 8 elimination Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway, Christopher Bell is the only driver chasing a point total to make his third consecutive Championship 4.

The magic number? 34.

Thirty-four points will guarantee a trilogy for the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing driver at Phoenix Raceway next weekend as he continues the quest for his maiden championship. However, having a point target has put Bell and his team in a bind as they will also be in a points battle with Hendrick Motorsports drivers William Byron and Kyle Larson if there’s a playoff driver beneath them who wins on Sunday.

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“It’s definitely putting us in an interesting position because one thing that my team does really well is just focus on ourselves and doing the best that we can for ourselves that day,” Bell said. “But with the points situation, I think it makes a little bit of sense to kind of see what the competition is doing. Myself, William and Larson, we’re in a points battle amongst the three of us. The thing that is playing against that is I’m sure William and Larson are going to be racing for the win, so that means that we’re going to have to be racing for the win as well. If the yellow flags make the strategy wonky, maybe it’s a situation where we just do whatever they do and try to stay on the same strategy with them, and we’ll lose together or win together. What you don’t want to happen is be on the losing side of it when they’re on the winning side of it and give up a bunch of points.”

Bell hit it right on the nose. Not only have himself, Byron and Larson won at Martinsville, but every driver that’s yet to punch their ticket to the Championship 4 has won at the Virginia short track.

Despite entering the penultimate race of the season with a 29-point cushion to the elimination line, Adam Stevens, Bell’s crew chief, has tossed out the notion of it being an advantage given how good the remaining playoff drivers are at Martinsville.

“The gap to the cut doesn’t matter,” Stevens emphasized. “The gap to our nearest competitor is what matters because regardless of what happens, we know one car is going to make it on points. So the gap to the cut, you have to assume there’s going to be a winner out of our playoff cars, so it’s the gap to our closest competitor.

“There’s only going to be one winner. So if three or four of them are at the front late, there’s going to be a lot of paint being traded, and that can set up some carnage — and some carnage that you don’t want to get caught in. So it’s going to be very interesting how it all plays out. Everybody that’s not qualified yet for Phoenix is a winner at Martinsville, which is kind of remarkable, isn’t it? It doesn’t even make sense. So everybody knows what they’re looking for there. Now whether we can all find it or not, I don’t know, but I would not at all be surprised if it’s not all of us in those top four or five spots.”

Bell has been near-perfect eight races deep into the postseason. He’s finished inside the top 10 in every playoff race except for Watkins Glen International and has finished runner-up in two of the last three.

It’s a position that’s new for Bell as he built quite the resume for himself in the regular season with three race victories and 10 stage wins.

In the two prior years when the Norman, Oklahoma native made the Championship 4, he needed to pull off heroics with walk-off wins at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval and Martinsville in 2022, followed by a massive shake-up at Homestead-Miami Speedway last year that opened the door for his golden ticket to Phoenix.

He won’t need a Freddie Freeman-esque moment from Game 1 of the World Series to make the Champ 4 this year, but Bell is staying mindful of the task at hand while feeling some relief being in the position he is now.

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“Certainly, this is what we’ve strived for,” Bell said. “Everybody strives to have the most bonus points, and we didn’t accomplish that. We’re second, but still, second is better than the rest of them, so it has made our playoffs go extremely smooth. But we know that getting into the Round of 8, it doesn’t matter how many points you have, you’re going to have to be competing for wins. We’ve done that, and we’re in position. It was definitely a huge benefit having the points in getting through the Round of 16, the Round of 12, and yeah, it was a good head start in the Round of 8. If I didn’t have those points, I likely wouldn’t be sitting in this position today.

For Bell, near-perfect isn’t enough. What looked to be a solidified win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway two weeks ago was taken away by Joey Logano’s fuel management in the final green-flag run. It left Bell frustrated, knowing what could have been and that the No. 20’s title fate would’ve been set, and Martinsville wouldn’t have mattered.

But that’s not the case, and Bell isn’t taking anything for granted when the green flag drops Sunday (2 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).

“I feel like people in the industry, they understand that, but the people outside of the industry, they didn’t understand the magnitude of that one position, right?” Bell said of his Vegas shortcoming. “And I got all week long, ‘Oh, you’re still plus-42, you’re plus-42, you’re in a great spot.’ But no, you’re not in a great spot. And nothing is guaranteed. I did everything in my power at Homestead, and that plus-42 shrinked to plus-29, and likely again this week, there’s a very good possibility that that plus-29 is going to shrink to plus-single digits depending on who wins the race. Nothing’s guaranteed except for wins, and that’s why winning is so important.”