Christopher Bell, No. 20 team showing championship pedigree

 

Christopher Bell may have started the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season with a “checkers-or-wreckers” approach, but over the past five races, the No. 20 team has shown that it may be ripe for a third straight Championship 4 appearance.

 

After Sunday’s ninth-place finish at Sonoma, Bell sits fourth in NASCAR’s playoff standings and ninth in the regular-season standings with 10 regular-season races remaining.

Bell has taken a circuitous route to his solid standing.

 

The 29-year-old driver put on a dominant display at Phoenix on March 10, leading 50 laps en route to a win, but he struggled to find consistency over the season’s first 11 races.

 

After a third-place finish in the Daytona 500, two consecutive sub-30th-place finishes knocked him down to 21st in points. His Phoenix win started a streak of four straight top-10 finishes, which was then followed up by four straight finishes of 17th or worse.

 

Kansas on May 5, however, proved to be a turning point for Bell and the No. 20 team.

 

In what turned out to be a historic race, Bell won the pole, led five laps and finished sixth — his best effort since Richmond on March 31. While Darlington saw a rather pedestrian effort — Bell qualified 12th and finished 13th — a quiet, solid day was surely appreciated by a team looking for any sense of consistency.

Two weeks later at Charlotte, Bell put together perhaps his best race of the season, as he won a rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600, leading 90 laps and picking up 67 of a possible 70 points.