Bell Fires Back at Larson Over Power-Steering Claim: 'I Hope It Happens to Him'

Christopher Bell has answered the friend who called his Las Vegas drive ‘bullshit’, and his answer came in two parts: a wish, and a physics lesson. Asked on Wednesday about Kyle Larson’s podcast verdict on his power-steering loss, Bell said he hopes it happens to Larson so he can talk about it, On3 reports. Then he described a failure that faded rather than snapped, which quietly moves the two drivers closer to agreeing than either headline suggests.

What did Larson actually accuse Bell of exaggerating?

A clean zero. On this week’s Stacking Pennies podcast with Corey LaJoie and Ryan Flores, Larson said there is no chance Bell hung onto a race car with no power steering, that drivers who say that always retain some assist, and that zero percent assist on an intermediate track is impossible, On3 reports. He softened it only slightly when told Bell’s in-car footage showed a heavy wheel, offering Bell some flowers but holding the line, and joked that he is probably the stronger of the two and could not have done it either.

The setting matters. Larson and Bell are longtime friends from dirt racing, and they are also first and third in the Chase, which is why a podcast jab between them lands differently from Denny Hamlin’s complaint the same week that his own team never told him Larson was a lap down. Las Vegas managed to make Larson the argument of the entire garage.

What does Bell say actually failed on the No. 20?

Not the assist all at once. Bell told The Tennessean the loss was a slow degradation from some point in Stage 2, dropping through stages of assist until it reached what he called the stall moment, and he was blunt that he does not know whether 10 or 20 percent remained. All he knew was that he could not turn the car.

That is a narrower claim than the one Larson attacked, and it explains the drive. Bell qualified third, finished second in Stage 1 and third in Stage 2, then salvaged 23rd with 17 stage points, The Tennessean reports. He said his shoulders and hands were still hurting the next day, and called the failure a parts issue that was nobody’s fault. Joe Gibbs Racing has had a litigious month off track, with Spire’s owner demanding proof in the teams’ trade-secret fight, but nobody is blaming anyone for this one.

Why does the size of the track decide whether the drive was possible?

Because a big track helps the driver turn. Bell said he was fortunate the failure came at Las Vegas, where the corners are wide enough that the car wants to track left on its own, so his job became slowing down until the car would follow the corner rather than forcing it, On3 reports. On the straights he was simply holding it straight.

A short track removes that help. Bell named Martinsville and Bristol as places where the same failure would have been far more detrimental, and the podcast itself supplied the comparison cases: LaJoie described running Bristol without power steering from the third lap, and Stenhouse ran the full Bristol night race with the problem a few weeks ago. Larson’s response was that both men are among the strongest in the garage, which is really his whole argument in one line: the feat is a strength contest, and he does not rate Bell’s entry. Stage racing and points are what Bell was protecting by staying out there at all.

How much does Bell’s wrist change the argument?

More than Larson’s joke allows. Bell is still dealing with a fractured left wrist from a violent crash at Michigan in June, MotorBiscuit reports, and he said after the race that his hands were shaky and tingly even though the wrist itself felt fine. Larson cited that injury as part of his scepticism.

Read the other way, it cuts against him. A driver with a healing wrist does not invent a heavier wheel for fun, and the soreness Bell described a day later is the ordinary receipt for two stages of manual steering. The garage has spent the week policing smaller things, down to what teams are allowed to spray in their pit stalls; a steering failure is the kind of problem no rulebook section settles, which is why it has become a credibility argument instead.

What happens when they meet again at Charlotte?

They race on Sunday, with the argument attached to a real gap. Larson leads the Chase after his second place at Las Vegas, Hamlin is 40 points back and Bell third at 55 behind, MotorBiscuit reports. Bell told The Tennessean he believes it will take at least two wins from the last five races to overhaul Larson, and that second places will not do it.

So the reply Bell actually needs is a result, not a quote. Larson has already given him the motivation and, helpfully, a public standard to be judged by: if the points leader’s own steering ever fades in the run-in, everyone in the garage now knows exactly what Bell will say about it.

The Charlotte meeting arrived with the Las Vegas race still attached to Bell’s name. Rain wiped out qualifying on Saturday, and NASCAR’s metric set the grid with Bell’s 23rd place at Las Vegas weighted at 70 percent, leaving the third-placed Chase driver 17th on the grid while Larson took pole. Bell’s answer on Saturday was procedural rather than personal: he accepts the metric for ordering a qualifying session and wants NASCAR to hold the session itself, even on Sunday morning.