Bell to race sprints in Texas
Norman native Christopher Bell is taking advantage of the NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series’ off week to compete in Tony Stewart’s Texas Sprint Car Nationals on Friday and Saturday at the Texas Motor Speedway dirt track in Fort Worth.
FORT WORTH, TEXAS — As Christopher Bell’s second season as a full-time driver on the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series has gotten off to a strong start, he’s finding less time to sneak off to dirt tracks to feed his original racing passion.
But when he finds the time, Bell takes advantage of it.
He won Tulsa’s Chili Bowl Nationals in January, and last month, he won two features at I-44 Riverside Speedway in south Oklahoma City, the track where he got his start in racing.
This week, with the Truck Series on hiatus, Bell will get to spend Friday and Saturday nights on the dirt track outside Texas Motor Speedway in a new event, Tony Stewart’s Texas Sprint Car Nationals.
Surprisingly, this will be Bell’s first time on the TMS dirt track, even though the 22-year-old Norman native grew up just three hours to the north.
“I’ve run a lot of dirt tracks in Texas, but they weren’t running sprint cars at the speedway track very much,” he said. “There’s a lot of good guys who will be running this event, Tony Stewart, Kenny Wallace and some other guys. And with it being on NASCAR weekend, there should be a lot of fans out there.”
The debut of the American Sprint Car Series event at Texas, developed in conjunction with Stewart following his retirement from NASCAR after last season, provides another fan experience during the race weekend.
“Tony’s been telling me for 10 years, ‘Don’t tell anybody, but when I’m done with Cup, I’m going back to sprint car racing full-time,’” TMS President Eddie Gossage said. “I didn’t believe him, but he’s doing it. We struck a deal with him, and he’s going to race here and there are guys coming from all over to knock the big boys off. It’s gonna be fun racing.”
Dirt-track success aside, it’s been a good season on pavement for Bell in the No. 4 truck of Kyle Busch Motorsports.
After an eighth-place finish at the season opener at Daytona, Bell won from the pole in Atlanta. He had the dominant truck at Martinsville last week before ultimately finishing third.
Last season, Bell qualified for the Chase and advanced all the way to the final race in Miami, finishing third in points.
He’s second in points this season, four behind defending champ Johnny Sauter.
“We got going pretty good at the end of last year, but we didn’t get going good enough,” Bell said. “We only won one race, so that was a disappointing year for me and for Toyota.
“Going into this year, I knew I needed to win more races, and the trucks have been superfast so far. I feel like we’ll be in position to win a lot of races this year.”