A power steering failure at Las Vegas Motor Speedway led to a frustrating and painful day for Christopher Bell, but he is recovered and ready to take on his first fall oval race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
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The parts failure happened during the second stage of the race. He began to gradually lose power steering before it went away completely under green flag conditions. Although it would briefly work under caution while Bell warmed his tires.
"At some point in stage 2, I was losing it slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, and then it reached... it went from, I don't know, whatever it was, 50% assist, 20% assist to the stall moment," Bell said on Wednesday.
"So I really don't know if I had 10% assist, 20% assist. All I know is that I couldn't turn the car."
Wrestling the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry for more than 100 laps took its toll. Bell had to take his hands off the steering wheel multiple times to rest his wrists, and he had a tingle in his hands that lasted many hours.
The shoulder and hand pain and fatigue lasted into Monday, but it has since faded as Bell has continued with his week.
"I think I got fortunate that it was at a bigger track," Bell said. "You know, certainly a small track like Martinsville — or I heard that Ricky (Stenhouse Jr.) had a power steering issue at Bristol — I think it would have been a lot more detrimental at one of the shorter tracks.
"Where Las Vegas, it was just the corners are so big that I, you know, the car, if you let go of the wheel, the wheel is going to turn left. So it was just a matter of I really couldn't turn the wheel further than it wanted to go, so I just had to slow my pace down until the car would just track the corner."
The other fortunate part for Bell is that this parts failure occurred later in the season. He fractured his wrist in a crash at Michigan International Speedway in June. He then spent several weeks recovering while wearing a cast and then a wrap.
Bell hit important milestones during this process, the first of which was ditching the cast for a splint at Chicagoland Speedway in July. He used a soft cast at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a track known for an increased likelihood of crashes and then fully ditched the protective gear as he neared the end of the regular season and into the playoffs.
"I'm very thankful that that did not happen a couple weeks ago because if it would have happened a couple weeks ago, I don't know what would have, what the outcome would have been," he said.
"But thankfully, my wrist has healed a lot since then, and my wrist was not the limiting factor."
Recovery aside, the power steering failure damaged Bell's championship chances. He finished 23rd with 31 points, and he fell to 55 points behind championship leader Kyle Larson.
This is not the largest deficit for Bell, who sits third in the standings with five races remaining in the Chase. But it is a bit disheartening for the Southern 500 winner, considering the success that Toyota teams had achieved by winning at three of the intermediate tracks this season.
"Looking at how the the deficit was, I'm like, we're very much capable of pointing our way into it," Bell said. "Where now it kind of feels a little bit more like the playoff situation, where you have that big bonus for race wins.
"And aside from race wins, you're, I don't think you're going to make up a 50-point deficit without that win bonus that is applied now. So you know, it feels a little bit more like that, the playoff format where I know, or I believe, that's going to take wins from me in order to become the champion."
