Bell was hoping to be the ninth driver to win four straight races, joining the likes of Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. β After three weeks in a row of having everything fall into place, Christopher Bell suffered some misfortune at a place where luck matters the most: Las Vegas.
Bell started near the back of the field because of unapproved adjustments in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He raced his way as high as third before a loose wheel issue on pit road trapped him in a position he never fully recovered from. Bell finished 12th.Β
Normally, scoring a top 15 on a race that could have been disastrous if the wheel actually came off would be a good thing. But these events came on a day Christopher Bell was hoping to tie a modern NASCAR record with a fourth consecutive victory.
Bell held off Carson Hocevar at Atlanta as the race ended under caution, raced down Kyle Busch to win at Circuit of the Americas, and beat Denny Hamlin in a side-by-side finish at Phoenix. He needed just one more win to tie a record set by NASCAR legends Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, and Cale Yarborough, among others.
“I knew we were going to lose at some point,” Bell told Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports. “You’re not going to win them all.”
A win for Bell would have been all the more special at this point in the season. Bill Elliott remains the only driver to win four of the first five races, a feat he accomplished in 1992.
Three race win streaks are still impressive. Kyle Larson was the last one to do so. He hit three straight wins twice in 2021 and closed the year with his first NASCAR Cup Series title.
Earnhardt (1987), Gordon (1998), Johnson (2007), Yarborough (1976), and Darrell Waltrip (1981) parlayed their four-race win streaks into championship campaigns. Elliott, Harry Gant (1991), and Mark Martin (1993) failed to win the title in the year they won four races in a row.
Richard Petty set a seemingly impossible record to beat in NASCAR’s pre-modern era with 10 straight wins in 1967. Β He went on to win 27 of the 49 races that season and the championship.
Bell’s winning streak might be over but his title hopes remain strong. He has gained the second-most driver points this season behind William Byron and will have plenty of playoff points for the season’s final 10-race stretch.
For the latest breaking news, weather and traffic alerts that impact you from WCNC Charlotte, download the WCNC Charlotte mobile app and enable push notifications.
