RACE: Kansas Lottery 300
TRACK: Kansas Speedway
START: 2nd
FINISH: 37th
LAPS: 3/200

Despite the setback, Bell continues to hold a top-four playoff spot heading into Texas Motor Speedway. Bell currently sits 23-points back from the leader.

Bell Comes Home 37th Following Lap One Accident in Kansas

The NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS) rolled into Kansas Speedway for the Kansas Lottery 300 and the start of the Round of 8 in the 2018 NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs on Saturday afternoon. After qualifying second, running a time of 29.543 seconds around the 1.5-mile Speedway, Christopher Bell and his Rheem team were involved in a lap one accident when another competitor got loose and turned into him in turn 2, relegating the Joe Gibbs Racing team to a 37th-place finish.

John Hunter Nemechek won the race, followed by Daniel Hemric, Elliott Sadler, Shane Lee and Tyler Reddick.

Despite the setback, Bell continues to hold a top-four playoff spot heading into Texas Motor Speedway. Bell currently sits 23-points back from the leader.

Bell and his Rheem team will have the week off before returning to the track in two weeks at Texas Motor Speedway. Coverage of the race begins at 4:30 PM ET on Saturday, November 3rd live on NBCSN, PRN and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio.

How did everything play out for you in that incident?
“I didn’t really see much of anything. Just kind of driving around there. Just heartbroken. This is one of my favorite race tracks we go to and especially after the run I had last year, this is the race that I was looking forward to whenever we started the year back in February. Our Rheem Camry was fast throughout practice and we qualified second, so felt like we were going to be able to contend for the win, but I think this is – actually this is not the first time I’ve been out on the first lap. We’ll try and make up for it at Texas and we still got a lot of race tracks that I can win races at, so hopefully we’ll move on from here.”

How valuable are your bonus points that you accumulated in the last round?
“That’s the beauty of this format. NASCAR’s done such a great job at giving us something to race for during the regular season. We’ve done our job winning six races this year, so we’ve accumulated some bonus points, so hopefully that can carry us through this bad stretch here and maybe we can find ourselves in victory lane later on in this round. If not, hopefully the bonus points will get us there.”

What did you see or feel out there during that incident?
“I didn’t really get to see anything, I just felt a lot. I don’t know. Normally whenever you’re up front, you’re in the safest spot you can be, but just didn’t get a very good launch and the side by side with the 7 (Justin Allgaier) car and it just didn’t work out.”

What did you see in front of you in the accident?
“I didn’t really get to see much, but just bummed that our Rheem Camry isn’t out there competing. I felt like we had a car that could compete for the win and this was a race that I was looking forward to from the time I left here last year. Unfortunately, I’m not going to get to race today.”

What happened in the accident?
“I don’t really know exactly what happened, I was just along for the ride. It’s just racing. We’ve done our job winning six races this year and accumulated some bonus points. We’ll just have to rely on them. I’m just bummed I’m not racing because this is one of my favorite race tracks that we go to so that’s the most disappointing part.”