LOUDON, N.H. – By most measures, Christopher Bell enters the opening race in the Round of 12 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway as the pre-race favorite. In recent years, the victory has come through Joe Gibbs Racing in the “Granite State,” having at least one of its cars crack the top two in the finishing order in 13 straight races.
Two of Bell’s 13 career Cup Series victories have come at New Hampshire. In 11 national touring series starts, he has hogged seven checked flags with a pair of runner-up finishes. He also participated in a Goodyear tire test in July, as a new tire code specific to New Hampshire will debut this weekend (it has previously been used in 2025 at Bowman Gray Stadium, Martinsville Speedway, North Wilkesboro Speedway and Richmond Raceway).
Confidence is always high for Bell when returning to New Hampshire.
“I was definitely excited whenever the schedule came out and I saw that Loudon was a Playoff race,” Bell stated on Saturday morning after being presented his 2024 Loudon the Lobster plaque. “It made me very optimistic about it and obviously this is a great track for me. You need to start out the rounds with a positive race and certainly this is a place that we should lead laps and should contend for the win. And, if you’re putting yourselves in that position where you are leading laps and you are contending for the win, even if you don’t win, you get enough points.”
Bell enters New Hampshire having won the series’ most recent race at Bristol Motor Speedway. He credits the No. 20 team for being lucky for surviving a tire conservation race at “The Last Great Coliseum” and picking up an additional five playoff points.
As the postseason progresses, Bell believes the No. 20 team needs to spend more time at the front of the field. Through the opening 29 races of 2025, Bell has led only 239 laps, the fewest of the four Joe Gibbs Racing drivers. Nearly half of those – 105 circuits – came in a dominant performance in the opening month of the season at Phoenix Raceway, capping off a three-race win streak through four races. In three of his four victories in 2025, he’s led a combined 21 laps at those races.
“Once again, I won a race, but I didn’t lead laps which is OK, I will gladly take that,” Bell said of winning at Bristol. “Last week was just such unique circumstances. We kind of won the lottery last week. Whoever won that race was going to have to have a substantial amount of luck and fortunately it was on our side.
“It was kind of a unique circumstance that played out. So, I don’t know that it necessarily was a true test of where the teams stack up.”
With the points reset, Bell jumped to fourth on the playoff grid, 20 points above the cutline entering New Hampshire. He has victories at two of the tracks in the Round of 12, and Kansas Speedway could be considered among his best intermediate venues with eight top-10 finishes in the past 10 races.
“You look at the race tracks on paper and they say that we should be really good at all of these tracks, and we should be able to have good performance,” Bell said of the Round of 12. “The toughest thing is just going to be going out there and doing it and not eliminating yourself.
“I think if it’s up to car performance, we’ll probably be fine but the execution side and finishing the races out, making sure that you make the right decisions on restarts, the right strategy calls, not making mistakes on long green flag runs – stuff like that – is going to be the difference maker in the Round of 12.”
Weekend execution begins with practice and qualifying. Bell believes one of the weaker parts of the No. 20 team’s game is qualifying, though his 13.5 average finish is ninth-best in the series (eighth best of the 12 playoff drivers remaining). Should Bell earn better starting positions, it makes the races easier on Sundays.
“That is mission critical,” Bell said of qualifying. “All of us are frustrated a little bit frustrated with how we’ve qualifying especially compared to our team cars. I say that because the team cars are the barometer. If the team cars are qualifying well, then you should be qualifying well too. And, through the summer months, we couldn’t even put it in the top 10. We’ve made gains on our qualifying performance and now it seems like we can consistently put it in the top 10, but our teammates are consistently putting it on the front row.
“Whenever you get deeper into the playoffs, you have to be scoring stage points, and a lot of the stage points are dictated by your qualifying effort. We’ve got to start qualifying better, and along the lines of qualifying better, that’s how you lead laps.”
Bell has started inside the top five in the last three visits to New Hampshire.