Gibbs senses chemistry brewing in Bell and team after second consecutive victory

Christopher Bell celebrates his win during a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas

Joe Gibbs knows quite a lot about what it takes to win a championship.

As an NFL coach, he won three Super Bowls. As a NASCAR team owner, his drivers have won five Cup Series titles.

And he certainly likes what he sees in Christopher Bell’s consecutive victories, first in Atlanta, and then in Austin last weekend. In both races, Bell hung around late and made the right moves to snatch victory.

From the race shop to the garage to the cockpit, Gibbs senses a championship chemistry brewing.

“I think in football every now and then you have a team that really had a great feeling about themselves, were really confident, and a great chemistry,” the 84-year-old Gibbs said after Bell’s latest victory.

“It doesn’t happen very often, and it doesn’t carry over from one year to the other. But when you kind of get that, I think it’s a great feeling when you see it as a coach or an owner. I think that’s what we have with the 20 team,” Gibbs said.

Bell has shown he can win in a variety of ways on very different tracks.

Bell won in Atlanta when he snatched the win in overtime on the oval superspeedway. On the road course at the Circuit of the Americas, he led just eight of 95 laps but won a four-car duel over the final 13.

He first chased down Kyle Busch for the lead, then held off Daytona 500 winner William Byron and Tyler Reddick for the victory.

And it took clean racing to get everyone to the finish line. Bell and Busch had a confrontation after last year’s race in Austin, but the pair avoided the kind of bumper banging that would have started another one.

The Austin victory was Bell’s 11th career win and his third on a road course. He now has four consecutive seasons with multiple victories. He is also the first driver since Kevin Harvick in 2018 to win two of the first three races of the season.

“The last two weeks at Atlanta and here, I kind of won without the fastest car, so it’s really nice to get those back that I lost last year,” Bell said. “I’m excited about what’s to come. We have high expectations and high hopes and goals for this year.”

The series next heads to Phoenix, where Bell is the defending champion, and then Las Vegas.

Crew chief Adam Stevens has already put down a marker on both races.

“There’s no reason we can’t go win the next two weeks,” Stevens said. “(Austin) has no bearing on next week whatsoever, and everybody is going to bring their best stuff and do their best job. But I really have so much faith in this team and Joe Gibbs Racing as a whole, and especially my driver, that I know we’ll be a factor.”

And that’s the confidence Gibbs has seen and heard in championship teams in the past, from the gridiron to pit lane.

“Adam, a great leader I think. He’s got a young guy there (Bell) that’s gaining confidence, and I think the whole team … I do think it’s hard to put everything together in Cup,” Gibbs said. “But I do think, like Adam said, we have it all together.”JIM VERTUNO, AUSTIN,  MDT/AP