“The wrecking ball,” Christopher Bell blatantly calls out Ross Chastain, backtracks his words after review

Ross Chastain has been under fire recently from his rivals for his aggressive driving style.


“The wrecking ball,” Christopher Bell blatantly calls out Ross Chastain, backtracks his words after review

Christopher Bell (@JGR/Twitter)

Christopher Bell has been the leading Toyota driver of 2023 and has once again proved to the Cup garage why he is the man Joe Gibbs should invest more in going forward; Bells scored a P4 finish at Richmond and was solid though out the day. He became the latest driver to have an on-track tussle with Ross Chastain and had some slaty words about him post-race.

While talking to Noah Lewis in his post-race, Bell explained the spin of William Byron on the restart with 21 laps remaining. The HMS driver, solid the whole day, was spun by Bell from the inside, and the TRD man accused Ross Chastain of not leaving enough space for him. He called him a wrecking ball, “I mean, the wrecking ball came in and made us three-wide at the last second, and there wasn’t enough room to be through it,”.

YouTube video

Bell was also critical of the No:1 Trackhouse driver in his post-race interview with Fox. He was feeding into the narrative that Chastain is a hyper-aggressive driver saying, “It was a pretty standard restart with the 1 (Ross Chastain) behind you. I tried to protect him from going to the inside, and he still made it three-wide there at the last minute, and there wasn’t enough room.”

But once the youngster got his heated cool and reviewed the footage, he found out it was his fault and admitted it via a Tweet later. “After watching the replay, I saw there was much more room than I thought in the heat of the moment. Sorry, William Byron,”. While he did apologize to Byron, he also owns one to Chastain for false accusations.

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William Byron blamed both the driver for the incident

William Byron 3
William Byron

Byron, who got spun when asked about the incident, pointed out that both Bell and Chastain are responsible. He said that the No:20 dive-bombed him from the inside, influenced by the No:1 Chevy. Though spun out, Byron leaves the track a happy man as he knows that HMS will give him competitive cars and expect many more wins in the coming days.

It looked like the 1 was inside the 20, and the 20 just overcooked the corner and had the fronts locked up and nailed us in the left rear. So I was just kind of restarting fourth there and trying to stay tight to the 9 and get a good restart. I just got tagged in the left rear. So, yeah, just a dive bomb move on the inside on his part, and it is what it is,” Byron said.

I had a great race car. The Raptor Chevrolet was awesome all day, and we will just keep bringing fast race cars like that, and we will get a lot more wins. It was looking like it could be another win before the caution. That’s the way it goes,” Byron added.

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