Christopher Bell in his Rheem number 20 Joe Gibbs Racing firesuit waving at driver introductions

Christopher Bell: 14 Wins, a Record He Never Wanted, and the Oklahoma Dirt Kid Chasing a Cup Title

October 15, 2026

Oct 15, 2026 · 5 min read·

Christopher Bell: 14 Wins, a Record He Never Wanted, and the Oklahoma Dirt Kid Chasing a Cup Title

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Driver Spotlight - where we pull one Cup Series driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the number 20.

The Short Version

Christopher Bell is a midget car kid from Norman, Oklahoma who turned into one of the fastest drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series. He has 14 Cup wins, a Truck Series championship, three Chili Bowl trophies, and the kind of speed that makes everybody else nervous. He also spent most of 2026 finishing second, eight times, which tied a record that had stood since 1981. He is third in the standings with four races left, and this is the closest he has ever been to a Cup title.

From Norman, Oklahoma to the Number 20

Bell was born December 16, 1994, in Norman, Oklahoma, the son of David and Kathy Bell. Oklahoma is not a stock car state. It is a dirt state, and Bell came up the dirt way, racing micro sprints and midgets on clay bullrings while most future Cup drivers were already in asphalt late models.

He was very good at it. In 2013 he won the USAC National Midget Series championship. Then came the Chili Bowl Nationals, the indoor midget race in Tulsa that dirt racers treat like the Daytona 500. Bell won it in 2017, 2018 and 2019, three in a row, making him only the third driver in the history of the event to win three.

NASCAR noticed. He went to Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Truck Series and won the 2017 championship with five wins that season. He moved to Joe Gibbs Racing in the Xfinity Series and won seven races in 2018 and eight more in 2019. He got his Cup shot in 2020 with Leavine Family Racing in the number 95, then moved into the Joe Gibbs Racing number 20 Toyota in 2021. He has been there ever since, with crew chief Adam Stevens on the box.

The Signature Moments

His first Cup win came in February 2021 on the Daytona road course, and it meant more than a trophy. Bell became the first driver born in Oklahoma to win a NASCAR Cup Series race.

The 2025 season was the one that put him in the title conversation for real. He won Atlanta, COTA and Phoenix back to back to back, becoming the 29th driver in Cup history to win three straight. He added the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro and the Bristol night race later that year. Four points wins, plus the All-Star money, in one season.

Then 2026 happened, and it was strange. Bell was fast almost every week and could not close. He finished second at Phoenix, Charlotte, Nashville, Chicagoland, Atlanta, Indianapolis and Iowa. Seven runner-up finishes without a win tied Harry Gant's mark from 1981, a 45-year-old record nobody wants.

Christopher Bell scored his seventh runner-up finish in 2026 & his fourth in the last five races. He is the first driver to score four runner-up finishes in a five race span since Kyle Larson at the end of 2016/start of 2017.
— NASCAR Insights (@NASCARInsights) August 9, 2026

He broke it in the biggest way available. On September 6 at Darlington, in the Southern 500, Bell ran down Kyle Larson late, passed him, and held off his own teammate Ty Gibbs by 1.038 seconds. First win of the year, first Southern 500 of his career, and it came in the opening race of the Chase.

Christopher Bell number 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota on pit road at the 2026 NASCAR All-Star Race — The number 20 Toyota on pit road during 2026 All-Star Race weekend. (Photo: Dough4872, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

By the Numbers

Here is the whole Cup career laid out. Everything below is a Cup Series figure through the Charlotte race on October 11, 2026.

Cup Series career totals through October 11, 2026. Original Happy Hour Racing graphic.

The Season of Seconds

You can look at eight runner-up finishes two ways. One way says he cannot close. The other way says nobody has been faster, more often, for longer. Bell led laps in most of those races. He has 707 laps led in 2026, 14 top-fives and 17 top-tens in 32 starts, and an average finish better than most of the field will ever see.

The second-place thing has not stopped either. At Charlotte on October 11 he came to the line alongside Chase Briscoe in a photo finish and lost it again. That one hurt, because Briscoe is his own teammate and because the Chase is tight. Bell sits third with 2,316 points, 51 behind leader Kyle Larson and two behind Denny Hamlin, with four races to go.

Off the Track

Bell married Morgan Kemenah on February 2, 2020. They met in 2010 at a dirt track in Ohio, where Morgan grew up in a racing family in Burgoon. She is not a bystander in the sport either. Since 2023 she has co-owned Bell Kemenah Racing with her father, Brian Kemenah, a longtime crew chief and mechanic. The two of them showed up together in season two of the Netflix series NASCAR: Full Speed.

He has never really left dirt racing behind. He still runs midgets in the winter, still shows up at the Chili Bowl in Tulsa, and still races out of a shop that feels a lot more like Oklahoma than Charlotte. For a lot of fans, that is the whole appeal. He races stock cars for a living and dirt cars for fun.

The Bottom Line

Christopher Bell has won a championship in the Truck Series, 19 races in Xfinity, and 14 in Cup. The one thing missing is the big trophy. He has four races to go and the speed to do it, and if he gets it, the Oklahoma dirt kid with eight second-place finishes will have picked the best possible year to finally finish first.