Bell’s rise began in Oklahoma
Norman native Christopher Bell has become one of NASCAR’s top young drivers, but he will always cherish the memories of his early racing days in Oklahoma.
FORT WORTH, TEXAS — Every time they drove down the road with the race car in a trailer behind them, three things were certain.
Country music on the radio, Mom’s nachos in the hotel room, and a freshly graded dirt oval awaiting Christopher Bell’s tire tracks.
For countless weekends of his youth, that was Bell’s routine, racing cars on dirt tracks in Tulsa, Claremore, Fort Cobb and a few other places around Oklahoma.
That, of course, came after the Norman native already had proved himself as a talented driver at I-44 Speedway in south Oklahoma City — well before his ninth birthday.
Now 23, Bell has become one of NASCAR’s top young drivers, but his memories of those early racing days revolve more around the music and the nachos than the shelves and shelves of trophies he won.
“Memories I’ll have forever,” said Bell, who will compete in the My Bariatric Solutions 300 in the Xfinity Series at 2 p.m. Saturday at Texas Motor Speedway. “Racing at I-44 Speedway was great, but you have your most fun when you road trip. At that time, Will Rogers Raceway in Claremore would race on Friday, then we’d stay in Tulsa and race at Port City Raceway in Tulsa.
“My mom would make nachos in the hotel room on Friday night. We’d work on the car on Saturday, and I’d be itching to get to the track all day.”
Unlike many successful young drivers on the NASCAR circuit, Bell didn’t grow up in a racing family. His parents, David and Kathy, started taking him to I-44 Speedway to watch Daniel Orr race. Orr played basketball for David Bell, who was coaching at Community Christian School in Norman at the time. Orr’s father, Will, had been involved in racing most of his life. He hauled his son’s car to and from the track, and worked on it in between.
He opened the door to racing for Christopher Bell, who started coming to the track at about 3 or 4 years old.
“They came out to watch Daniel race, and then the racing bug bit Christopher,” Orr said. “Christopher would sit in the stands. But unlike the rest of the kids, who were wondering what they could get to eat or if they could go play in the dirt, he was glued to watching the racetrack.
“When he was 5 or 6, then he started asking questions that you would expect to come out of an adult or an older teenager. Technical questions.
“Then he just started hanging around my shop when I was working on my son’s car.”
Bell started racing junior sprints at I-44 Speedway when he was 6, and worked his way up the ranks, helping Orr build the cars he was racing.
“That was Uncle Will’s rule. He wouldn’t work on it unless I was there,” Bell said. “I had to be there and be a part of it.”
Around age 9, Bell started making those road trips to Tulsa. Within a few years, he started competing at a national level.
“When he was about 12, he told me, ‘Dad, I’m gonna race cars for a living,’” David Bell said. “At that time, we didn’t have a lot of financing. So I encouraged it, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking I didn’t know how it was going to happen.”
That’s when Darren Ruston of El Reno entered the picture. His daughter, Kenzie, was moving from dirt racing to asphalt, where she had a successful career until she stepped away from the sport in her early 20s.
Darren Ruston offered Kenzie’s midget car to Bell.
“Darren and a man named Mark Lowe sponsored
Christopher,” David Bell said. “Christopher and his crew chief would leave Oklahoma on Fridays, and they’d drive up to Indiana and Illinois and race Friday and Saturday in the midget, then drive back through and run a mini-sprint show in Missouri on Sunday.
“Up in Indiana is where he got seen by Keith Kunz Motorsports.”
That turned out to be the game-changing relationship for Bell. He began racing for Kunz, replacing current NASCAR star Kyle Larson. That led to Bell getting connected with Toyota’s development program.
It landed him in a truck for Kyle Busch Motorsports in 2015, where he became the first Oklahoman to win a race in one of NASCAR’s top three series. And he topped that feat by winning the Craftsman Truck Series season championship last fall.
Bell won a race in the Xfinity Series last season, running on a part-time basis. This season, he has a full-time seat in the No. 20 car of Joe Gibbs Racing, which is likely to be his ticket to NASCAR’s elite series, the Monster Energy Cup.
Bell’s parents will be at Texas Motor Speedway to watch him race on Saturday, enjoying the product of their time, their work, their money, and all those weekends full of nachos and country music.
“My mom, my dad and Uncle Will, they devoted their lives to help me race,” Christopher Bell said. “I’m extremely grateful for them and people like Darren Ruston for the things they’ve done for me.
“They’re the reason I’m here.”