Christopher Bell claims the NASCAR schedule is “hair-raising”

Joe Gibbs Racing star driver has been very critical like many of his counterparts over the R-16 hosting multiple wildcard races.

Christopher Bell claims the NASCAR schedule is “hair-raising”

Christopher Bell (Via IMAGO)

The 2024 NASCAR playoff will kick start with the Quaker State 400 available at Walmart hosted by the Atlanta Motor Speedway. The plate race is expected to be more chaotic like the whole R-16 that is set to feature two more wild card races with Watkins Glen being the second event and Bristol being the cutoff.

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell who reckons NASCAR might have lost some of its identity over the race venue selections, pointed out that the current playoff schedule is hair-rising. He asserted that the R-16 not starting at Darlington as it used to be, may cause some best drivers to not score enough points to progress.

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Well in one way it does feel a little bit safer. But the schedule, man. The schedule is just, it’s hair-raising. We go to, in the past, the Round of 16, you would start off at Darlington, which is a real race track and people, the best guys are going to score the points at Darlington.
Christopher Bell said via The Teardown podcast.  

Atlanta being a wildcard superspeedway race, he pointed out that makes it tough for drivers to shine just because of talents. Most often than not luck outshines capability in such events and having them on the post-season schedule dents make much sense.

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This time we start off at Atlanta. Well, we all know how Atlanta can be. We can get some people in there that, you just never know who’s going to score points at Atlanta.
Christopher Bell added.
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Christopher Bell asserts none of the R-16 races will be traditional events

Unlike the events at Atlanta, Glen and Bristol could have been normal races. But with NASCAR introducing the high dreg tiers, the race would become more about saving the fuel and tier and less about racing, giving unexpected drivers a shot at winning races.

Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Martin Truex Jr.
Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell (In Circle) and Martin Truex Jr. (Via IMAGO)
And then we go to Watkins Glen which should be a normal road course but yet we have a tire that is supposed to produce a lot of tire deg, and we don’t, that could be a Bristol race from the spring, we don’t know. Then we go to Bristol, which from the tire test, I think everyone is expecting it to be a duplicate of the spring race. So, we’ve got three races that are all going to be not traditional races.
Christopher Bell said.

The Joe Gibbs Racing though is part of the younger side of the garage seems to be frustrated with having more races that favor luck over pure race craft in the post-season. He is demanding a return to the old way where the fast cars and fast drivers are rewarded.

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