NEWTON, Iowa — Christopher Bell addressed his contact with Zane Smith in overtime of last Sunday’s Brickyard 400 that sent the No. 38 Front Row Motorsports crashing into the wall.
The incident came to light as replays showed the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota hit the backend and turn Smith to the right, which initially indicated a right-rear hook. However, there was no prior run-in between the two drivers and immediately after the race ended, Bell walked over and issued apologies to every member of the No. 38 team.
“It was really bad,” Bell said Saturday at Iowa Speedway. “That was a really, really bad mistake on my part. I made my mind up literally the second after I said, ‘I have to go apologize to everyone.’ I walked by their pit box, saw their pit-crew guys — they were tearing down the pit box, I apologized to them. Then wandered over to the hauler. Tried to find Zane, he wasn’t around, but was able to talk to the crew guys. Even ran into the crew chief [Ryan Bergenty] on the way there. I felt really bad about it. It was obviously a great run for them and they were doing really good. My mistake took them out.”
RELATED: Iowa starting lineup | Best photos from Iowa
The No. 38 team’s front-tire changer, Ryan “Skip” Flores, commended Bell on this week’s “Stacking Pennies” podcast for going up to every team member after Sunday’s race.
“For the first time ever, a driver walked up to all of our pit-crew guys and apologized,” co-host Flores said on the podcast. “He went to our truck and apologized to all our road crew guys. That takes balls after you wreck somebody’s stuff to go and stop and say ‘Hey man, I’m sorry.’ It’s one thing to call the driver on Tuesday, but to go face all the guys and do that, that’s really one of the first times I’ve remembered that.”
Bell added that going up to the crew members made him nervous, and he was prepared for any outcome from approaching them.
“I knew I deserved what was coming,” Bell said. “I’m gonna own it. If I want to walk up there and they want to ‘M-F’ me and tell me to get out, I deserve that in that moment. I felt like I owed them the respect. I wanted to take accountability to them, and hopefully — I tried to show them accountability and tell them that it was on me. I didn’t know what I was walking into, but they were pretty busy just trying to get loaded up and doing their thing.”
The sting was felt even more by the No. 38 team as Bell and Smith were fighting for 10th after the first overtime restart.
Bell wound up scoring an eighth-place result, while Smith scored in 31st after going to the garage.
It continued a streak of Smith getting the short end of the stick after getting caught up in late-race incidents at Sonoma, Dover and Indianapolis. According to Bergenty, the team lost out on 51 points combined over the last three weeks.
The contact also came just one day after Austin Hill’s right-rear hook of Aric Almirola that resulted in a one-race suspension for Hill. Bell was unsure how the incident would be viewed by NASCAR.
MORE: Austin Hill spins Almirola at Indy | Hill suspended one race
“I honestly didn’t know how it was going to go,” Bell said. “I felt like it probably could go either way. Obviously, it was a mistake and I think the general consensus was the 21 deal wasn’t a mistake. It sucks because I did hook him to the right and there’s been plenty of cases where people have done that exact same mistake, but it’s been to the inside. The one that comes to mind is Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott in 2020 at Darlington. Kyle was just trying to squeeze up into a gap and misjudged it exactly like I did, and hooked Chase and his car went left instead of right. That was the exact same thing I did. He turned right and the right turn has been a talking point over the last couple years.”
Over his career, Bell doesn’t have a laundry list of enemies or run-ins that would’ve made the contact with Smith a pattern of behavior that loses him respect in the garage.
Bell understands that on-track ethics vary from driver to driver, but he’ll turn his focus to Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350, where he will start 17th (3:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, NBC Sports App, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“Everyone has a different code of racing hard and what’s clean and fair,” Bell said. “But I try and do my best to race as fair as possible. I feel like I’ve demonstrated that to my peers and competitors and industry personnel throughout the years. I hope that whenever people see that, they’re like ‘yeah, he didn’t mean to do that.\"”
Read the full article here
