Did You Notice? … Joe Gibbs Racing has been a fascinating team in transition throughout the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season?
Kyle Busch could only look on as sponsorship deals failed to materialize before he was tossed to the side in favor of a cheaper, younger talent: Ty Gibbs. Martin Truex Jr. went through a year that’s featured more bad luck than perhaps any in recent history, missing the playoffs despite a season where he’d sit seventh in points without a postseason reset. Denny Hamlin had the worst start of his career only to rebound in the playoffs, positioning himself to advance before Ross Chastain pulled a legendary move to knock him out at Martinsville Speedway.
Into the void, as chaos rained down around him, stepped Christopher Bell.
Bell isn’t getting proper coverage this week because of Chastain’s once-in-a-generation moment that launched him into the title chase. He’s also spent his time in Cup under the radar, mostly drama-free aside from an incident at Watkins Glen International last August with dirt rival Kyle Larson. We learned two things from that dust-up: that you better call Bell, not text him, when you wreck him by mistake, and that he’s a private person who doesn’t want conflicts to play out in front of the media.
No one has the right to tell an athlete how to live their life in the spotlight; but in an age of social media, where everything feels public, traits like quiet, nice and toiling outside the limelight limit the growth of your fanbase. Bell has just 84,000 followers on Twitter while each of his other JGR teammates in Cup, by comparison, have at least half a million.
Is that dynamic about to change? In the course of nine weeks, Bell stepped up in the playoffs and delivered with his back against the wall. He’s the first driver ever in this format to win when facing playoff elimination twice. In the closing laps at Martinsville, it was 41-year-old teammate Hamlin who was forced to play it safe, trying to make it in on points while Bell first ran down, then passed Chase Briscoe from 1.5 seconds behind to win a race where passing was deemed impossible.
Bell did it starting 20th and driving the No. 20 Toyota, the runt of the JGR litter since Matt Kenseth left the program after the 2017 season. The team had been suffering for years before that, never fully recovering from a 2015 incident where Kenseth got spun by Joey Logano during the playoffs, ruining a season in which he won five races and was…
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