Christopher Bell after violent Daytona wreck: 'I'm good to go'
A week after his Toyota barrel-rolled up to 10 times on the final lap of the 2016 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season opener at Daytona International Speedway, Christopher Bell relived the frightening incident on Friday morning at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Bell, a 21-year-old Kyle Busch Motorsports driver, climbed out of his mangled vehicle uninjured but was transported to a local hospital for precautionary reasons. He was released that same night.
"Walking to the ambulance I was pretty dizzy, and then by the time I got there I was really dizzy," Bell said at AMS. "As far as injuries, no injuries at all except bruising. 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."
Bell's wreck was by far the scariest of Speedweeks, although violent rides are nothing new for drivers at NASCAR's two restrictor-plate tracks -- Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway.
"I'm just really thankful that everyone before me that have taken hard crashes and NASCAR has done all their research about it," he said. "They just wanted to take me in for precautionary reasons and, yeah, that's probably why they took me back there. I was a little bit nauseas, but not bad and went there, did concussion tests, but thankfully I never really took a super-hard hit and I didn't have a concussion."
So what was Bell, who is in his first full season of truck competition, thinking as his vehicle tumbled end over end?
"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," he said. "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."
For Bell, who comes from a sprint-car background, Daytona wasn't his first time upside down. But it was different from his past airborne excursions.
"The biggest thing about the stock car is it might not hurt as bad because you've got more material around you, but the g-forces were way more just because I think the biggest thing was you're sitting to the left, compared to an open-wheel car (where) you're in the center of the car," he said. "So everything is flipping around you, where in the stock car you're off to the side of the truck. So whenever you start barrel-rolling, it's trying to throw you out of the car."
Bell is thankful that the Truck Series has a race this weekend at Atlanta, unlike in recent seasons when the series has taken several weeks off between the opener at Daytona and the next race.
"With the open-wheel program, you run 100 races a year, so it's, you flip on Saturday, you're back racing Sunday," Bell said. "Luckily, we didn't have a huge break where you have to sit there and ponder it, so I'm looking forward to today and tomorrow to get Daytona back behind us and where we can start -- hopefully start fresh with a good run here this weekend."
