AVONDALE, Ariz. (AP) — Nothing seemed to be going right at the start of Christopher Bell’s relationship with crew chief Adam Stevens. They struggled to get the right setups and results.
That concerned Bell, who was still early in his NASCAR Cup Series career, but Stevens wasn’t worried. He previously won a championship with Kyle Busch and could see that Bell had the goods to have a successful career after moving to Joe Gibbs Racing.
“I will never forget 2021, my first year with Adam Stevens, and me and Adam got off to a rocky start,” Bell said Sunday from Phoenix Raceway. “We were sitting in his office there at JGR and he looked at me and said: ‘We can do this. I’ve won three straight sitting in these exact same two chairs,’ talking about him and Kyle Busch. And he said, ‘I know that we can do it.’”
Stevens was right.
Bell turned into one of the Cup Series’ best drivers, earning his first win at the Daytona International Speedway road course in 2021. He has had at least two victories in each of the past four seasons and reached the Cup Series’ Championship 4 in 2022 and 2023.
Bell and Stevens went through a bit of a dry spell after winning at New Hampshire last June, but they have been nearly unstoppable at the start of the 2025 season.
Bell ended a 19-race winless streak at Atlanta, followed with a victory on the road course at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas and ran his winning streak to three straight on the flat mile oval at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday.
That’s three wins on three different tracks, making Bell the first driver to win three straight races in the NextGen car, which debuted in 2022. He is first Cup Series driver to win three straight races since Kyle Larson in 2021 and the fourth to win three times in the first four races — the first since Kevin Harvick in 2018.
“The chase (last season), we had so many opportunities and did everything we needed to do, it just didn’t go our way,” Stevens said. “And what we’ve seen this year, (winning) three out of four times, things are going our way.”
Stevens has been a big part of it.
A racer growing up in Ohio, Stevens got his first break in NASCAR as a designer at Petty Enterprises in 2002 and moved to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2005.
Stevens got his first shot at being a crew chief for JGR’s No. 20 Xfinity car, driven primarily by Joey Logano in 2011. He teamed with Kyle Busch starting in 2015 and the pair had a successful run together, winning 19 Xfinity races and the 2015 Cup Series championship.
Stevens moved to the No. 20 car to become Bell’s crew chief in 2021 and, after that rocky start, started racking up checkered flags.
“Adam and Christopher are a real pair,” JGR owner Joe Gibbs said. “Adam, obviously you can tell he has a gift and a crew chief. He’s done the Final Four about nine times, and so just appreciate them and how hard they work.”
The work has put them on the cusp of elite company.
With a win this weekend in Las Vegas, Bell would become the first driver to win four straight races since Jimmie Johnson’s championship year in 2007. Bell would still have a long way to go to match Richard Petty’s all-time wins streak of 10 set in 1967, but being mentioned in the same breath as a seven-time Cup Series champion like Johnson is quite heady.
“That’s incredibly special to hear that and know that I have that opportunity ahead of me, and we’re going to do a darn good place for it,” Bell said. “I’m kind of in disbelief that I have that opportunity and I’m looking forward to it.”
With Stevens in his corner, Bell should have a good chance of pulling it off.
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