Christopher Bell loses Champ 4 berth after illegal wall maneuver at Martinsville

Bob Pockrass

FOX NASCAR Insider

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Christopher Bell felt he didn’t make an unsafe move in the final turns Sunday night at Martinsville Speedway.

He simply made a mistake, leading him to hitting and running against the wall in the final turn.

It was a mistake — or a move, depending on the view — that ultimately determined NASCAR’s Championship 4 field. And Bell isn’t part of it.

NASCAR determined that Bell made an unsafe move and put him on the tail end of the lap he was on (he was one lap down), costing him four spots and leaving him those four points short of advancing to the Champ 4. William Byron earned the spot on points, while the race winner Ryan Blaney joined previous semifinal-round winners — Joey Logano and Tyler Reddick — in earning automatic bids to compete for the title next Sunday at Phoenix.

“I made a mistake and slid into the wall,” Bell said. “They ruled that as a safety violation. … I don’t know what to say. I didn’t advance my position into the wall. I lost time on the racetrack.

“It’s not meant to be.”

At the Martinsville race two years ago, Ross Chastain made a daring move that will forever live in NASCAR lore as the “Hail Melon,” when he floored the gas pedal going into Turn 3 and used the wall to direct his car, gaining enough spots to advance to the championship round.

NASCAR announced at the start of the 2023 season that that move would be considered a violation of its safety policy that says it is a violation of NASCAR rules “to compromise the safety of an event or otherwise pose a dangerous risk to the safety of competitors, officials, spectators, or others.”

So there is no specific rule about riding the wall — if a driver times and hits the wall right, the driver can turn faster. The rule states that safety violations are handled on a case-by-case basis. Martinsville has an area just past Turn 4, where the wall is bolted and locked during the race but does open up so that haulers can enter the track (there is no vehicle tunnel).

NASCAR took more than 20 minutes to make a decision on Bell’s move before determining it as unsafe.

“[He] clearly got up against the fence there in [Turns] three and four and rode the fans all the way off four there,” NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer said. “Strictly it’s to protect our drivers as well as our fans. So, yeah, it was pretty straightforward.”

Even Byron had a hard time celebrating as he finished tied with Bell on points for the final spot. The top finisher in the race at Phoenix (the entire field competes) among Byron, Logano, Reddick and Blaney wins the title.

“It’s just hard to believe, really,” Byron said. “It’s just a crazy sequence of events.”

Byron was subdued as he found himself a subject of controversy but not of his doing. Several Chevrolet drivers (Austin Dillon, Ross Chastain among them) ran close behind him but did not pass him late in the race.

“It was clear what was going on,” Bell said.

On the Bell side, his Toyota brethren Bubba Wallace slowed on the last lap, and Bell passed him just before the fateful move.

“They never moved me but they were racing hard,” Byron said. “They’re still getting in the corner hard.

“They’re not lifting down the straightaway big margin to get back to somebody like [Wallace] did. It’s hard racing and we’re all at the limit.”

Wallace said he lost the handling on his car.

“I went loose or something broke and was nursing it,” Wallace said. “He tried to slide me and I was like, ‘Brother, I’m just trying to bide our time and not crash.'”

Sawyer said they would take a look at whether any driver manipulated the finish of the race. NASCAR has issued severe penalties to drivers who they feel manipulate the finish.

“We’ll take all the data, video,” Sawyer said. “We’ll listen to in-car audio. We’ll do all that, as we would any event.”

The NASCAR playoff system is designed to create drama to the bitter end, which can put calls into the spotlight. NASCAR eliminates four drivers after each of three three-race rounds, with a win in the round granting an automatic bid to the next round with any remaining spots determined by points earned in the round.

NASCAR has had to make several rulings in the last three months that have impacted the playoffs — they ruled that Austin Dillon could keep his Richmond win but not use it to get into the playoffs as he had contact with two other cars on the way to the finish; they disqualified Alex Bowman at Charlotte for being underweight, which knocked him out of the playoffs; and now the decision at Martinsville.

Bell team owner Joe Gibbs declined comment on what he thought of the decision after he left a meeting with NASCAR officials after the race. He said he wanted to appeal the decision, but Sawyer said it was not appealable.

“I’m not bitter,” Bell said. “It just wasn’t meant to be. I’m proud of the success we had in 2024. It’s a bummer to not go to Phoenix [with a shot at the title]. … Thankfully, I’ve got a couple of more years on my contract so I’ll get another shot at it.”

Before leaving pit road after the race, Bell went up to Byron and they hugged.

“That’s not how I wanted it to go,” Bell told him. “But congratulations.”

Byron told reporters he felt the rule was clear.

“We sat in a meeting two years ago at Phoenix and talked about the ruling and whether it should be done again and we came up with that because of the safety of the crossover gate there could fling open and cut the car in half,” Byron said.

Sawyer indicated the same thing — he didn’t like having to make the call and they took such a long time to make a decision to make sure they made the right call.

“I’m not going to speculate on what Christopher did or said what he meant to do,” Sawyer said. “That wouldn’t be fair to try to make that type of decision based off that. “We looked at the data. We looked at video. We’ve been very clear, based off our conversations with our industry, based off that move two years ago, that that would not be tolerated.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.