Christopher Bell debunks the "correlation" between ‘qualifying speed’ and superspeedway racing amid big Atlanta win 

Christopher Bell downplayed the "correlation" between the speed at which NASCAR drivers make the qualifying attempt and their performance at the drafting track. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver took the checkered flag at the recently concluded race at Atlanta Motor Speedway even after starting the season's second race outside the top 30 on the grid.

After an underwhelming season start at the Daytona 500 event and the Ford dominance for the better half of the 1.54-mile race, Bell secured a spot for the 2025 playoff with a 10th Cup Series career win in Georgia. In the overtime finish, the No. 20 driver wheeled his Toyota machine to the victory lane under caution.

Reflecting on his qualifying attempt and eventually winning the Ambetter Health 400 race, Christopher Bell doubted the impact of a qualifying attempt while competing on drafting tracks like Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta. In a conversation with Kevin Harvick, he said:

"I don't really know what to think of the correlation between qualifying speed and how your car races because I've had plenty of races. I go back to 2022, the first year of NextGen. I swept the poles at Talladega and we qualified really well as a group. The Toyota cars did, but those were really bad races for me in general, and we didn't perform well." [3:09 onwards]

Bell then highlighted the historic qualification attempt at the Daytona 500, in which his teammate, Chase Briscoe, secured Toyota's first-ever pole in the Great American Race but still didn't achieve the expected result.

Furthermore, the Oklahoma native Bell pinpointed Ford's qualifying speed at the Atlanta race, who failed to reach a satisfactory finish.

"You look at the Fords and they qualify up front and they race fine too. So I don't really know what to think of it, what to make of it. At the end of the race, you had myself and Ross Chastain restarting in the front two rows... And then you saw Austin Cindric and Blaney and Logano, Josh Berry, who are all in the top five. And they were racing there at the end too. So I genuinely don't know what to think." [3:50 onwards]

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"Not the one I circled": Christopher Bell gets real about his Superspeedway win at Atlanta

In a conversation with former NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick on his Happy Hour podcast, Christopher Bell also shared his thoughts on securing a win early in this season even more so at a drafting track like Atlanta Motor Speedway. He said:

"You know how hard the season could be starting off with Daytona, Atlanta back to back. Fortunately, getting a win in the first two races is always amazing, but to do it at Atlanta which is definitely not the one that I had circled as a potential win, is something that is gonna hopefully carry forward." [0:50]

As things stand, William Byron and Christopher Bell are the first two winners of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season. The next stop for the ace stock-car drivers is the road course event at Circuit of the Americas on March 2.