Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Christopher Bell Interview after his win at COTA | VICTORY LAP

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

In this week’s episode of Victory Lap, Kevin Harvick sits down with Christopher Bell after his dominant win at Circuit of the Americas —his second consecutive NASCAR Cup Series victory! Bell breaks down his race-winning strategy, discusses the challenges of road course racing, and shares how his team has built momentum in the 2025 season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour, presented by Echo Park Automotive and NASCAR on Fox. And on this week's victory lap, it's the same guys last week. But the impressive part about everything that Christopher Bell did this week is it was on a road course. I don't feel like there was near as much luck involved in everything that cycled out at the end. So we had a heck of a race to watch. And let's hear from the winner of last week's race. Well, same time change, same channel here, Christopher. You know, I think going from a super speedway to a road course.

course. That's about as far from each end of the spectrum as you can get. How does that make you feel about your team and where you guys are at? Kevin, it just makes me proud. It makes me very proud for everyone that works on this number 20 car. And, you know, last year, at the end of last year, we had a ton of races getaway that we had the best car at. And now two weeks in a row, getting races that we arguably didn't have the best car at is really special. So it's a great way to start the year and it's something that we've been focusing on for a long time to just be strong at every track that we go to. So the road course, we have been very strong at the last couple years.

Obviously, Atlanta was a little bit of a shock and something that I'll take and I'm proud of, but getting into the bread and butter of what our strengths are now going into Phoenix and Vegas and Homestead, the normal ovals. So, yeah, it's been a fun two weeks and just proud. I'm very proud of the effort that everyone's put on this car. Well, you talk about that effort, and talk to me about that. Where did the, where did you develop your road racing background? I mean, to be at the top level in this sport, you have to be good, no matter how much road

racing background that you have. You didn't come from a road racing background. How did you develop that through the years to get to where you are now as being a consistent contender on the road courses? Yeah, so, Kevin, it's been a, it's been a process, that's for sure. Whenever I first came into stock car racing, the Toyota Foundation, the Toyota group, I remember they took me to New Jersey in an arca car for the first time. And I'm like, what on earth did I get into?

And it was so foreign to me, like so foreign. And Jack Irving and Tyler Gibbs and everyone at the TRD driver development group, they put in a lot of effort into getting me comfortable on the road courses. They sent me to Chris Cook's driving school out in Phoenix. I spent a lot of time working with Michael Self, did some Trans Am races, a couple of practice sessions, a couple test sessions. And then through the younger parts of my career, going to Canada with the truck series and then the Exfinity cars, we went to Road America, mid-Ohio.

I just became better and better at it. And I started enjoying it. And once I got the hang of the technique of it, it actually, I started feeling like it related to dirt track racing just because you're always improvising and you're always, you're not looking for perfection like you are on the obols. On the obols, if you're just a little bit tight or a little bit loose, you're communicating that to your crew chief and trying to get him to make the right adjustments to make the car go good. And you have to be perfect to do well on the obols where the road course with so many. different styles of corners and the shapes are so different in the angles and trajectories, nothing is going to be perfect. So it's all about improvising and just doing the best that you can with what you've got. And that's been a strength for me. Well, it's been impressive to watch.

And I know it's always a weekly process to get ready for the road courses, but I don't think a lot of people realize it's actually a yearly process to stay in tune with everything that's going on. And it's a lot more work. When you talk about the work part of it and the preparation, a little bit different racetrack this week, I thought from a show standpoint, it looked like it was better. What did you think of the new section of the racetrack

and what kind of loop did the new tire throw you guys as far as how you unloaded from practice until the race? Yeah, I'll be honest, I didn't think that the new section of racetrack really changed much. It certainly, whenever they changed the officiating of turn six, That really opened up how you drove that section of the racetrack and just cutting turn six, going straight to turn 6A. That changed a lot, but it was still, it was still CODA.

You know, you had to figure out a little bit how to attack 6A and 6B had a little bit of an elevation change there, which made the car really light, really loose. I about wore it out, lap one of practice jumping over there and sliding off the track. So that took a little bit of adjustment period, but everyone seemed like it got the handle of it pretty quick. The big change for us has been that tire. So if I'm not mistaken, the first time that we ran the tire was at Watkins Glen and the whole Toyota camp, JGR included, really, really struggled at a track that is normally really, really good for us. And then we went to the Charlotte Road course on the normal road course tire and we were fine and competitive and ran up front. So

we showed up at Cota with the Walkins Glen tire. And once again, it was a struggle through practice and qualifying. But going back to being proud, like Adam Stevens, the engineering group on this 20 car, they did so good at making the car more competitive throughout the weekend. And from practice one to practice two, they made great adjustments. Qualifying was a little bit of a struggle, but after I went back and looked at data, I noticed some things that I was really struggling with and not doing a good job driving the car. So Adam made great calls all weekend long to get the car more competitive and and I felt like I did my part of studying and then driving the car better on Sunday than I did on Saturday. So it's it's been a learning process with this new tire, but it always is

anytime there's a change. And my team showed up and did the best of improving over the course of the weekend. When you look at the end of the race and that battle with Kyle Bush and, you know, I would say that the tire advantage definitely puts you into a position to overtake because it looked like the run before, you just couldn't quite make the pass as the tires were even. And then Adam put you in a position to kind of, I felt like you guys kind of took a chance to say, okay, if the caution comes out, we got to have a tire advantage here to really put ourselves in position to pass. But talk to me about that battle with Kyle. Obviously, we all covered the, you know, the last year situation. And I'm screaming to use the front bumper up in the booth. And

then I'm like, oh, man, now it all makes sense with everything that happened last year, your comments after the race. But talk. to me about the battle with Kyle and just how patient you wanted to be to, I guess, prove to Kyle that you wanted to race him clean and almost make up for last year, I guess. Yeah, so, Kevin, going back to the strategy stuff, I know you've seen that move before. I go back to Richmond whenever you won. It was deja vu to that where, you know, Rodney pitted you early. You got out front, had a big advantage. Adam pitted me late. I had tire advantage and was closing on you on the last couple laps.

So I was on board with it. As that third stage unfolded and I was second to Kyle, I felt stronger than him for a period of time. And then the longer that we went, I felt like I was deteriorating over the long run, maybe a little bit worse than him or equal to him. But definitely as we went longer, my ability to pass was getting worse and worse.

So the 24, you know, notoriously as a short pitter. They were the first ones to hit pit road. And then I think Kyle came a lap later. And Adam gets on the radio and he goes, hey, man, just be smooth here. Be smooth here. And I'm like, I got you. I got you. I know what's coming.

And I was all for it because I felt like we were going to, you know, we were going to be on offense in the closing laps. And, you know, I didn't know if we were going to have enough time or not. But whenever we came back out after the pit stop, I was closing the gap pretty consistent. consecutively. And I was looking forward to it playing out and it going green. But then obviously, whenever the yellow came out, it made it a lot easier being closed up to them. And yeah, I mean, I definitely needed all the tire advantage I could get because it wasn't an easy pass, even with having those couple lap newer tires. When you got behind there in turn one, did you slide the

tire or did you feel like you were in there too far and you were going to hit him? Oh, I thought I was going to clean him out. I had to abort. And so I had been really strong into one all race. And I could make passes. That was my best opportunity to pass all race long. And I was just like, man, if I can get close enough, I'm going to try it. I'm going to try it. And Kyle was just, he was pushing his entries so hard.

And he was the best car that I'd been around on corner entry. So, you know, I peaked out. I showed him the nose that I'm going to do it. And I went in there. And he went in there so. that like I ran out of braking potential and I locked the rears up, the engine stall and I'm like, oh gosh, I'm going to clean him out. So I just aborted, turned right so that I didn't hit him. That was the last thing that I wanted to do. And it was eye-opening how like I was able to get right

back to him. And then whenever I got right back to him, you know, it was the same thing. I kind of stalled out and I wasn't able to make a run on him into the break zone. But I'm like, okay, well, you know, there's still a lot of time here. And I don't want to, I don't want to make a mistake and end my day or, you know, end his day or, you know, make it, get him out of the way or spend him out. So I'm like, I'm going to ride this thing out and hopefully put pressure on him. And then, yeah, he slipped getting into 15 and open the door to allow me to get beside him. Well, it was an impressive day. You guys have done a great job to start this season and put yourself in a position to what looks like true championship contenders

again with a really quick start to the season. So I've had a lot of success. at Phoenix. So good luck next week. And maybe we'll see you back in the same background, same time next week. I would love that. Thank you, Kevin. All right, man. Thank you.