The Toyota drivers were running in sync, bumper-to-bumper, with a new strategy in the Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. Leading the charge were Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe, who set the pace for the field and forced the competitors to pick up the pace. Everything seemed to be going according to plan. After hitting the pit road during the green lap runs, the Toyotas had already made their move, but in reply, the Fords couldn’t get in a straight line towards the pit road and brought out the caution.

As the race went green again, it was Bell who was leading the charge of the field and Denny Hamlin right behind him, putting his bumper to good use. With 9 laps to go, the No. 11 car gave the good old bump on the rear end of the No. 20 car, but this wasn’t the cleanest of contact. Rather than pushing Bell ahead on the track, he got loose and slid sideways, catching Chris Buescher with him. Both the driver rammed hard into the inside wall, but the JGR driver had a nasty crash, nose-first into the wall.

Denny Hamlin didn’t know what sparked the wreck that took out his teammate, and jumped on the radio to share his side of the story. “Man…apologies if that’s on me. We weren’t even up to speed yet. I don’t know why that would have wrecked him. When he shot down to the bottom, I wasn’t even sure I was actually on him.”

Fortunately, Bell was okay as he made his way out of the race car. But Chris Buescher wasn’t pleased after being caught in other people’s mess. He wasn’t in the mood for apologies or clarity and sent a blunt message to his team via radio. “It’s junk. That f—— hurt. Dumb——.” Both Bell and Buescher were released from the infield care center, whereas Hamlin will fight it out to see if the Toyotas can get the job done.

Well, Bell had every right to be mad about being wrecked out by his teammate. However, he didn’t point fingers at his teammate, but accepted his fate competing on a superspeedway track.

Christopher Bell isn’t holding grudges after being wrecked out at Talladega

With the safety of the drivers being a big talking point ahead of the race, Bell’s crash was just another example of how good the Next Gen cars are at keeping the drivers safe. It was a hard impact that saw the entire front fender of the No. 20 car torn into pieces. But luckily, Bell came out of the crash pretty much unscathed.

“I think I feel really good. I don’t know, my HANS device, my seat, my belts, everything seemed like it did well. It was a big one, that’s for sure.” Bell said this to the media. Not only that, he even cleared the air surrounding any bad blood between him and Denny Hamlin following the incident.

“Whenever you’re the car getting pushed, you’re completely at the mercy of the guy behind you. You know, Denny didn’t do anything wrong. You have to push, you have to push to be successful. It’s a product of the cars we race with this rules package,” he added. Now the onus is on Denny Hamlin to make up for his mistake. Although the wreck was unintentional, a win by a JGR car would be the best scenario for the team overall.