"Not a lot of places to hide here": Christopher Bell's crew chief highlights what makes Atlanta better than Daytona

After Christopher Bell won the Cup race on Sunday, his crew chief Adam Stevens highlighted the differences between Daytona and Atlanta. It's worth mentioning that ever since Atlanta's repave in 2021 transformed the intermediate racetrack into producing superspeedway-like racing.

During a post-race media interaction, Bell's crew chief, Adam Stevens was asked why racing at Daytona wasn't as good as the one at Atlanta. Stevens replied by stating:

"The length of the runs is outside of the fuel window, so it puts everybody really trying to make the fastest green flag stop they can. So up until the green flag stop, nobody is racing. Everybody is running around like a bunch of buffoons. I think it’s horrendous, and I wish we could do something to change it. The simplest thing to do to change it is change the run length to match the fuel cell, match the amount of laps we can run on a tank of fuel hard."

Stevens pointed to the proceedings in Stage 1 at Atlanta where a lot of drivers were 'limping around' to make a green flag stop while others were running hard. He then mentioned the cautions in the last two Stages of the race that negated the green flag stop.

"The other thing is, this track is a full mile, damn near, smaller than Daytona. There’s not a lot of places to hide here. Things happen really fast. You don’t need seven or eight cars to be fast. It takes away the manufacturer allegiances because it’s just not a pack style race," the crew chief explained.

He added that the whole field at Atlanta is 'in a pack', but they can't be separated so decisions are made for benefits of upto ten cars at a time.

Christopher Bell and the #20 team is aiming to win the NASCAR Regular Season Championship this year

The #20 driver winning the race in overtime ensured his spot in the playoffs. It's worth mentioning that the first win of the season for Christopher Bell in 2024 came relatively early as well when he won at Phoenix in the fourth race of the season.

But while their Phoenix win last year only paved way for two more wins, this year Adam Stevens is hoping the early win for Christopher Bell 'frees' them up. Stevens emphasized that they're a team that expects to run up front and their focus is on winning the regular season championship and collecting as many bonus points as possible.

"This is a great start tonight to win the second race of the year. Probably a track that maybe we didn’t think that we had circled as far as a potential win, so to come in here and really take one away from them is really good," Stevens described.

With that said, it'll be interesting to see if Christopher Bell winning at Atlanta opens up doors for more wins in the regular season for him.