NASCAR investigated and reviewed Christopher Bell hitting Zane Smith late in the Brickyard 400 this past weekend. Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports went to X\/Twitter on Thursday morning to announce that NASCAR determined that Bell\u2019s hit was \u201cnot a move of retaliation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor those asking about Christopher Bell and his contact with Zane Smith: That incident was reviewed and NASCAR viewed it as an aggressive, but mistimed, racing move by Bell and not a move of retaliation that rose to the level of a penalty,\u201d Pockrass wrote<\/a>. Smith was not happy with Bell after the Brickyard 400, as he felt like he was hooked in the right-rear in overtime. <\/p>\n Smith went to social media to express his frustration. \u201c2 weeks in a row getting hooked in the RR in the closing laps of the race. This one was brutal,\u201d Smith wrote<\/a>. \u201cWe are atleast running good when it happens and there are a lot of positives to take away from today. Our day will come. Try again in Iowa!\u201d<\/p>\n The contact led to a second overtime. Smith earned a P31 finish, while Bell finished eighth to earn his second top-five finish in the last three races. Bell is having a strong 2025 season, but he has had his issues recently. At Dover last week, Bell spun out twice, which led to a P18 finish. <\/p>\n Can Christopher Bell take that next step?<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the difference between Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell. Denny\u2019s going to go as fast as he can go and not spin out,\u201d Kevin Harvick said on<\/a> Kevin Harvick\u2019s Happy Hour<\/a> last week. \u201cYou look at a Bell and you look at\u00a0[Kyle] Larson\u00a0and some of those guys. They get themselves into these positions. It\u2019s the dirt car mentality. It\u2019s like drive it to the edge, and if it spins out, okay. If it doesn\u2019t, I guess it works.<\/p>\n \u201cI think in these scenarios, this is still one of Bell\u2019s weaknesses, in my opinion. \u2026When you\u2019re racing for the win, you\u2019ve got to be able to capitalize on if you don\u2019t win, finish second and being able to do that, not step over the edge. That\u2019s just one of the things that Bell needs to get better at, in my opinion, of not stepping over the edge. We\u2019ve seen it happen a number of times, and it puts him in a bad spot. I think that makes it harder to win a championship, because you\u2019re going to make those mistakes in pressure moments of not finishing second.\u201d<\/p>\n Bell has won three races this year and has finished in the top 10 13 times. He is currently sixth in the Cup point standings with 664.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR investigated and reviewed Christopher Bell hitting Zane Smith late in the Brickyard 400 this past weekend. Bob…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,10328,634,82],"class_list":["post-36496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-christopher-bell","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}