Christopher Bell has commanded a lot of speed this season, but that has barely yielded any luck. That’s been the running narrative so far, but knowing what he was dealt last Sunday, you’d say, “He’s plenty lucky.” At Michigan last weekend, Bell took a hit that NASCAR officials later called the hardest crash of the Next Gen era. The wreck happened on Lap 148 on Turn 4 of the FireKeepers Casino 400, while Bell was trying to edge out Chase Elliott for the runner-up position behind race leader William Byron.
A violent impact that destroyed Bell’s No. 20 Toyota, damaged the SAFER barrier, and halted the race for more than 20 minutes while crews repaired the wall — it’s inevitable at this point to not bring this up: Crashes like this instantly take you back to the most dreaded moments of NASCAR history, and veteran driver Kenny Wallace does exactly that.
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“I mean this with love. He could have been killed,” Kenny Wallace broke his silence on his YouTube channel Wednesday. “I’m sure, if that was 30 years ago, he’d have died. That safer barrier did its job; those new seats, six-point seat belts, 7-point seat belts, Hans device. We don’t need to kill people to convince people that NASCAR is dangerous.
“You’re running 213 miles an hour, and run that son of a b**** right into a wall. NASCAR’s dangerous, guys. That’s all I’m trying to say. But thank god for all the safety equipment. Dale Earnhardt Sr. didn’t die in vain.”
Dale Jr. was in the booth witnessing it in real-time, and there was a silence before both cars came to a halt. Junior almost breathed a sigh of relief seeing Bell jump out of the car on his own accord. “I haven’t seen that kind of a hit in a long time,” Junior admitted.
It didn’t look like a terrifying crash to the naked eye, one would admit. But it’s the kind where a driver goes into the wall at that cursed “flush” right-front angle of an impact with that speed that makes the rest of the field feel racing is a futile exercise. In a nutshell, watching the crash wasn’t for the faintest of heart.
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The force of the crash was so severe that Bell’s car briefly caught fire on impact. The SAFER barrier absorbed part of the impact by flexing inward. Judging by the flared-up radio communication immediately after the hit, it was a difficult sight for other drivers and spotters to focus on the race knowing what had just happened. Brett Griffin summed it up accurately, “When you see Bell take a hit like that, you have a job to do, but you do it with a lump in your throat.”
The story is not ending with Michigan; neither is it pausing there for Bell
NASCAR’s safety department confirmed Bell’s crash was the largest Delta-v reading recorded since the Next Gen car debuted in 2022. Matt Harper, NASCAR’s managing director of safety systems, said it was the hardest impact he has personally reviewed since joining the sanctioning body in 2015. This was surely another edition of “Big E saved another one,” as Griffin’s X post said.
After the wreck, Joe Gibbs Racing sent Bell’s destroyed car back to North Carolina, where NASCAR engineers examined the seat mounts, restraint systems, and cockpit structure to understand how they held up under such extreme forces. Fortunately for him, Bell walked away with nothing more than a fractured wrist and some ankle bruising, after getting relegated to 10th in the points standings, losing three positions after his 31st-place DNF on Sunday.
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Even so, per team owner Joe Gibbs’ statement, Bell has already been cleared to race this weekend at Pocono Raceway. Missing a race would hurt his playoff position even more. Despite tasting the wall, he is one of the fastest drivers in the series, ranking third in laps led this season.
The challenge is not unknown to him. In his eight Cup starts at the Tricky Triangle, Bell has two top-five finishes and three top-10s, with a pair of fourth-place finishes. Sounds reassuring, but Bell was last spotted boarding a JGR plane with what appeared to be a cast on his left arm. Time will tell if he’ll be able to generate enough lift with that arm.
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