After driving into the top five from a 13th-place starting spot, Christopher Bell's chance at winning the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series championship has been blown to pieces, after slamming the outside wall in the second stage of Sunday's season-finale at Phoenix.
Bell, making his second straight appearance in the Championship, was running inside the top five - second-best of those eligible to win the title - when the right-front brake rotor exploded on his No. 20 Toyota Camry TRD.
In the laps leading up to the mechanical failure, Bell had been relaying to his Joe Gibbs Racing team that he was having issues with the brakes, telling crew chief Adam Stevens that he was going to need some help cooling them if he was to finish the race.
"Well, that was my first time I've ever exploded a rotor in my career, so, yeah, I was surprised," said Bell. "Early on in the race I had a little bit of brake fade in the first run. In the second run, it just kept getting worse and worse."
With the Joe Gibbs Racing driver out of Sunday's 312-lap contest at Phoenix Raceway, Bell, with a finish of 36th-place, will end up finishing fourth in final NASCAR Cup Series point standings in 2023, behind Kyle Larson, William Byron, and Ryan Blaney, in some order.
"It stings to not have the shot at the end of it. Obviously, we were all four really close, and we all four showed strengths at different times. I think it's going to be a great championship race, and whoever it is, is going to be very deserving."
The retirement for the Norman, Oklahoma native marks the first time since the implementation of the winner-takes-all championship format in the NASCAR Cup Series, that one of the series' Championship 4 has retired from the event early since 2016.
Now, the battle comes down to Kyle Larson, William Byron, and Ryan Blaney, as the three move forward in a tight-knit battle for the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series championship.
