Folks, after a mundane Homestead Miami Cup race and then somewhat a clean Martinville, if we chose to ignore Joey Logano calling Ross Chastain a “jack—” finally we had a race, where there was some drama. And that’s just how the ‘Lady in Black’ is. We all know Darlington never disappoints. In the recent race, Ryan Blaney was set for his first win of the season. But thanks to Denny Hamlin’s luck and his crew chief’s strategic planning, the #11 got a back-to-back. Somehow, Christopher Bell managed to finish above Blaney as well. The #20 called it a “confusing day.” Well, it’s strange to say this, but Bell, with the kind of caliber he has, has still never won at Darlington.
Even when he got a pole start in the fall race of 2023. The best C-Bell has managed so far is a P3 in the fall race last season and a P3 in the recent race. However, even he doesn’t know how he pulled that off, especially after not having the best cars on the track. Bell started on P17 and ended in the top 5. After the race, the JGR driver shared details of his confusing run on the “track too tough to tame.”
Is Christopher Bell’s 2025 luck fading away?
Surely, ‘lucky’ would not be the right word for his previous season. Despite having the best average finish, the #20 car could not make it to the playoffs. However, this season, Bell’s been on a roll. He won three races back-to-back. And now, on a mediocre day, he pulled off a top 5 finish. Here’s how his day went.
First, on lap 4, Kyle Larson got spun just a few car lengths ahead of Bell. This could have just as easily ended Bell’s day. But he survived. And then, rather than climbing up from P17, he dropped positions. In fact, in stage one, he was struggling to stay on the lead lap as race leader William Byron was hunting him down. Eventually, Christopher Bell finished the stage on P26. But then, in stage two, we saw a drastic change of events. By the end of it, Bell was P6. And in the final stage, he pretty much stayed on the top. And then, with 4 laps to go, Bell is running P5. That’s when Bubba Wallace and Larson made contact. This put the race in restart, and Bell climbed to P3. And that wrapped up a day that even Bell couldn’t wrap his head around.
In the post-race interview, the #20 driver said, “Yeah, I don’t know… It’s so confusing, my head’s just spinning because, literally at the beginning of the race, I’m getting passed for 25th, and then all of a sudden, I inherit track position, and I’m able to maintain my position. So, a very, very confusing day for us.” But is it just the turn of events on track that confused Bell, or are there pre-race conditions?
Well, that’s something even Bell cannot explain. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Matt. My car drove awful. It drove terribly whenever the green flag dropped. I was in the back. Clearly, I about went a lap down, and then I’m complaining to Adam [Crew chief]. He is obviously making adjustments on it. But then, all of a sudden, I inherit track position, and my car flip-flops. I would go from being super tight to super loose, and I went from being good on the long run—or better on the long run, I should say. It wasn’t going anywhere at the beginning of the race, but then all I had was a short run at the end of the race,” a confused Christopher Bell said.
But not everything at Darlington was confusion covered with rainbows and sunshine! While C-Bell had the racing gods in his favor, some drivers just did not.
The unlucky drivers of Darlington
First up on this list has to be Kyle Larson. He wasn’t having the best day at Darlington. First, the lap 4 spin, and then getting wrecked by Bubba Wallace. That was also actually Larson’s fault. Tyler Reddick got into the wall ahead of him and bounced off. This caught Larson off guard; he braked, and Wallace couldn’t help but spin him around. And like Larson, Wallace wasn’t having a great day either. After a P5 start, he finished in P21. That must be disappointing, especially since he’s been on a roll recently, finishing in P3 in the last two races.
Then again, second on this list has to be Ryan Blaney. Had Wallace and Larson not made contact, Blaney would have won the race, the first of the season and the first for Team Penske. Naturally, Blaney was disappointed with a P5. Post the race, he said, “I thought we had the race won, so I don’t really know. I’ll have to watch that replay of how that yellow came out and watch it back. We did a good job. Great strategy call of kind of running long and giving us time to run down (Reddick) and a lot of those guys that short-pitted. So, it was a great call and a great car. Just really fast and never really got to control the race. Nothing really went our way. Pit road, we have to work on a little bit, and the caution coming out during the cycle set us way back.”
Also, we would like to mention William Byron on this list. He should have won the race. The #24 driver took the pole start. Led all the laps of stage one and stage two. And that made him only the second driver in stage racing history to lead all laps of both the stages. Byron basically led 243 laps, most any driver has ever done in Darlington. And after such a run, even a P2 finish seemed like a disappointment.
“Just really proud of my team. To bring that level of effort and preparation and have a car like that and for us to execute like that, it was looking like it was going to be a perfect race. We were going to lead every lap. So (I) was really proud of that. Those guys could just be aggressive on the other side of the green-flag cycle, and we lost control there. And once we lost control, it was too late in the going to get back up there. It sucks. I’m sure it’ll sting a lot tonight. There’s still a lot of positives. It stings in the moment for sure,” Byron said.
What did you think of the race? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
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