“I Had Wrote Them Off” – NASCAR Insider Astonished by Rattled Joe Gibbs Driver’s Recovery

He might have suffered a horrific crash, but Christopher Bell defied the odds when he managed to remarkably finish in 13th place in the Michigan race in the NASCAR Cup Series. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was tagged from behind by Alex Bowman and lost control of his car, which slammed into the wall, heavily damaging the rear in the process. That was seen as the end of the weekend for him as nobody believed that he could make a comeback from that and score some good points.

The car was heavily damaged and the JGR mechanics had less than 24 hours to get it back on track. The race again saw the green flag on Monday and the performance Christopher Bell delivered was nothing short of extraordinary.

NASCAR Insider ‘Shocked’ by Christopher Bell’s Recovery

On a recent episode of the NASCAR on NBC podcast, host Nate Ryan sat down with NBC’s NASCAR analyst Steve Letarte to discuss everything that happened at Michigan. After dissecting most of the race, the pair got to the Christopher Bell miracle and Letarte did not contain his appreciation for the #20 JGR driver.

When asked by Nate Ryan if he was surprised by the performance Bell pulled off after the crash he had suffered, “shocked” was the word Steve Letarte used.

“I’ve asked the TV folks to cut me the repairs and all the videos we have to try to understand what they’re working on. And I said it right on air. You know they weren’t too worried about the right rear quarter panel and everything you would have been worried about in the old car, they couldn’t care less.” Letarte added.

Letarte would then describe his trackside experience as he watched the JGR mechanics do their very best to repair the car and get it to the best shape possible, and they spend a lot of time looking at the floor and the rear of the vehicle.

“You know, they had those arms up underneath the diffuser making sure everything’s down. It just proves how these cars work. The spoiler, they spent a lot of time around the deck lid and the spoiler and sealing it to the rear glass and doing a lot of things there.”

“They spent a lot of time underneath that car working on, they called it a diffuser flap which is basically there for aerodynamics to not get a car upside down. You can’t just tape it up, so they had to repair the pin,” Letarte added.

The NASCAR analyst then had a light-hearted moment with Nate Ryan as chuckled over the former’s chance decision to keep Christopher Bell in his fantasy team out of compulsion. It turned out to be one of the smartest fantasy picks of the weekend.

“I had wrote them off. I didn’t even have Christopher Bell. I’ll tell you how bad it was. I luckily had him in my fantasy lineup from dumba** luck because I had more starts of his than William Byron’s so I William Byron out to save the one start I had left. That’s the only reason. I wish I could do it because of points,” he said.

“Then I looked up on the ride home and I’m like, ‘Well don’t I look smart cause I got points from Christopher Bell,’” Letarte added.

While Bell had an amazing weekend, there was one man who shocked the NASCAR world for the second week running in Michigan. None other than now a four-time race winner, Chris Buescher.

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Before the 2023 season began, Buescher had only won two Cup Series races in his career. He managed to double his tally within the space of eight days with two back-to-back wins at Richmond and Michigan. His Richmond win was surprising enough, but the result of Michigan proves that it was no fluke.

With only three races to go until the playoffs, Buescher has found a rich vein of form, and the RFK Racing man hopes that he can carry it through until the end of the season.

“It’s certainly very good timing as we head into the playoffs in a few short weeks,” he said as per AP.

The competition is heating up in NASCAR as drivers scramble for the last few points. They can amass ahead of the playoffs. There are drivers that are yet to book their spots in the last 16 and with three races to go, things are only about the get more intense.

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