Motorsport photoMatt WeaverThu, January 15, 2026 at 12:36 AM UTC·4 min readDuring load-in day over the weekend, Christopher Bell took some time to just reminisce in his hauler with Keith Kunz Motorsports co-owner Pete Willoughby because so much of his path to the Cup Series runs through this building.
“We just sat down and talked about how this building basically launched my career,” Bell told Motorsport.com on Wednesday morning. “He hired me to run his car for the first time at the Chili Bowl in 2013 and I was just expecting a one-race deal.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“I was supposed to go Sprint Car racing with Rick Ferkel but one day before my prelim race that night, he took me into the grandstands in 3 and 4 and said they wanted me to race full-time for them.
“Like, this was before I even hot lapped, so Pete and I were just reminiscing how this conversation in 2013, in this building, forever changed the forecast of what my career was going to be.”
Bell went on to win six races en route to the USAC National Midget Series championship that year. He added seven more wins the next year in a runner-up finish to teammate Rico Abreu.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBy this point, he was on the Toyota Racing Development radar, and began racing pavement with greater regularity. He won there too, added three consecutive Chili Bowl wins from 2017 to 2019 and was in the Cup Series by 2020.
But again, every pivotal moment in his life and career runs through this building, and it is not lost on him when he returns to race each year. With that said, this year is different because he is not racing for Pete and Keith.
He’s not racing for Chad Boat either.
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This year, Christopher Bell is racing for Christopher Bell, a team comprised of his friends, including teammate Kaidon Brown. He won the Invitational Race of Champions on Monday and it was obvious that his first win as an owner-driver was special.
Why do it this way?
“Well, whenever you show up as a driver here, at first, it’s about proving you belong and there’s no better way to do that than with a team like Keith and Chad,” Bell said. “You know their cars are going to be good and they have that proven notebook.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“They run so many cars and have so much track time that they can try a lot of different things each time one of their cars hit the track. So that’s why their teams make sense for a young driver and why it made sense for me to race there too.
“But I already accomplished that. I have won races for the best teams and with the best crew chiefs and I wanted a challenge. I wanted to race with my friends and have my own space in the pit area.”
Bell said his first call was to Brown, and that he didn’t even plan to drive the second car, until everyone on his short list told him that they had other deals locked down for 2026. So he jumped in his No. 21 instead.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“But overall, winning as a driver here doesn’t give me the same high because I had been there and done that and the highs are not as high,” Bell said. “So to win Race of Champions, with my own stuff, that was a high I hadn’t had before.
“If we can win with Kaidon, that would mean way more to me than even winning Race of Champions. I just enjoy being here with my friends more than the racing at this stage.”
With that said, he is here as a driver too, and he absolutely wants to get to four wins but for the same intellectual reasons he listed before.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“It would mean a lot but it’s so much more about the team aspect than the driving aspect,” Bell said. “Winning number four as a driver, it just doesn’t do it for me. I would obviously love that, but like last year, I came here with Keith and Pete, and I just didn’t feel the same burning desire.
“It’s just different now. Hopefully we get the opportunity on Saturday and I think it’s going to be a different feeling than the one I felt last year because there’s a different level of investment in building the cars and doing it all on my own if that makes sense.”
It did.
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