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Last Friday night, Christopher Bell wrecked his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota Tundra in the closing laps of their season opener at Daytona International Speedway. It was a scary wreck as his No. 4 kept barrel rolling down the track flipping several times before finally coming to a stop. Bell went to the infield media center and was later sent to a local medical facility for further evaluation.
Today at Atlanta Motor Speedway Bell’s face showed bruising on his face and it seems a reasonable assumption, the bruising was because of his Daytona wreck. But Bell says,the bruising may also have happened for other reasons.
“My face was pretty bruised,” says Bell. “And I think – basically just my forehead and down a little bit to my eyes, but I think that’s just from – I don’t know if it was because my helmet. That was my first race on my helmet, so it was really tight and a couple of times I’ve crashed open wheel cars and just because the helmet is so tight on my head I’ll get a little bit of bruising, but I couldn’t tell you if it’s from the helmet being tight or just the series of barrel rolls.”
So what went through Bell’s mind as he was careening through all those barrel rolls down the track?
“Basically I was just trying to wonder when this thing was going to stop and whenever you start flipping, it just feels like it goes on forever,” says Bell. “I was in the tuck position just gripping the wheel as tight as I could just hoping it would stop and whenever it would stop then no one would hit me and I’d be on all fours. Luckily, my spotter he called over to me that everyone’s gone by, nobody’s hit you and, yeah, just waiting for it to stop.”
When Bell finally did stop, the adrenaline was still rushing through his system as he let everyone know he as fine, but he was more than ready to get out of his truck.
“When I stopped, you’ve got a lot of adrenaline and so I felt really good,” says Bell. “As soon as I got done crashing, I was on the radio, man, like, ‘I’m fine. Let me out of this thing,’ and attempted to get the window net down, but it was stuck, but then after a couple minutes of fumbling with it, I was able to get it down and hopped out, but walking to the ambulance I was pretty dizzy and then by the time I got there I was really dizzy.”
The dizziness left Bell with an uneasy feeling and the infield medical staff felt it was enough reason to send Bell to a local medical facility for further evaluation, despite no other apparent injuries.
“As far as the injuries, no injuries at all except bruising,” says Bell. “I mean, my face was a little bruised afterwards, but other than that I was fine – a couple of days later, I was fine. Woke up the next morning and felt 100 percent until I started – until I got out of bed – and then once I got out of bed I realized I couldn’t move quite as fast, but after a couple days that was all gone and I’m good to go.”
After the Camping World Truck Series practice session at Atlanta this morning, it was clear Bell is ready to move on from Daytona, placing second with a speed of 178.816-mph and a lap of 31.004 and just 0.131 behind leader, Grant Enfinger.
Bell is racing his first full season in the Camping World Truck Series this year after racing seven races with KBM in 2015. He won his first Truck race at Eldora Speedway last July. So now Bell is ready to get back behind the wheel of his KBM No. 4 at Atlanta Motor Speedway for the second race of the 2016 Camping World Truck Series season on Saturday.