On Saturday night (Sept. 13) at Bristol Motor Speedway, Christopher Bell won his fourth race of the season.
The victory was the 13th of his blooming NASCAR Cup Series career, and all 13 wins have come in the last five seasons. Bell should be a household name based on that record.
Until now, he hasn’t been.
But what Bell said after his victory might have changed that.
“Most importantly, this week has obviously been a very tough week,” Bell told NBC Sports. “And you know, there’s a lot on our minds and … this one’s for Charlie.”
A thunderous applause followed, to which Bell turned to face the crowd and pumped his fist in acknowledgement.
The Norman, Okla., native was of course referencing the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old political activist and father of two young children. Kirk was shot to death while hosting a public debate forum on the Utah Valley University Campus just two days earlier.
In one simple sentence, Bell showed a side the public hadn’t previously seen. He also showed a level of courage I felt was much needed at this tumultuous time in American history. Regardless of what you may see online from the extremes, most Americans believe the assassination was a tragic and unacceptable event, including those left of center who vehemently disagreed with Kirk’s politics.
The extremes in the minority of America, who either feel the assassination was somehow justified or who cite it as a casus belli for additional violence, often seem to get a louder voice than the majority. Going against these extremes does a lot to preserve peace and provoke unity. It also requires courage in an environment where so many seem to be at each other’s throats.
There is a warranted cry frequently echoed by sports fans asking athletes to “stick to sports.”
But there are times in this country when something happens that goes beyond the typical political discourse — a moment that deserves a statement from anyone given a platform.
The unity that was shown in support of Bubba Wallace in 2020 was an example of that. Facing potential racism in the form of a noose some felt was intentionally placed in front of Wallace’s hauler (later disproven by an FBI investigation), the sport came together in solidarity behind the Black driver at Talladega Superspeedway.
The recent assassination of Kirk, a well-known figure who many drivers and fans are close to in age and very familiar with, is another. A few Cup regulars, including Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Noah Gragson, went public with their own thoughts in the wake of the incident.
But neither driver listed above has Bell’s resume of accomplishments. His seven race wins since the beginning of the 2023 NASCAR season are the third most in the sport, behind only Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin during that timeframe. Those are part of a select few to be considered household names due to longevity and success. Bell is the youngest among that group, with arguably the highest ceiling for where his career can go.
Yet Bell has remained a bit of a mysterious figure, despite his success. Part of the mystique has come from his reserved nature. He rarely speaks out about anything not related to racing. If you scroll Bell’s social media pages, you will find content almost exclusively related to motorsports, with some silliness sprinkled in with his wife, Morgan Bell, and one outlier — a visit to the Arlington National Cemetery, where he laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
In recent years, a frequent criticism of NASCAR drivers has been they’re too vanilla. That lack of personality comes paired with lives too private for fans to ever find out who they truly are as human beings.
It adds up into a theory that the sport is less popular today than decades prior because those drivers now lack star power. They must walk a fine line: on one hand, stick to sports, while on the other, show us some personality. Just don’t rub anyone the wrong way, either, in the Fortune 500 boardroom or in the stands.
Bell is an important case study in this phenomenon. He’s still relatively young at age 30 (one year younger than Kirk), with presumably most of his best years still in front of him. Ask your barber or your boss if they’ve heard of him. Odds are: they haven’t.
The recent Netflix series NASCAR: Full Speed offered a glimpse into Bell’s family life and competitive nature, but still did not show much about him we didn’t already know.
Until Saturday night, that is. After years of laying low, Bell found his voice.
Kirk’s death is one of those rare events that silence, while understandable given the circumstances, could be considered negligent with all that is at stake. Yet silence would still be the easiest path.
Throughout the sports world, tributes to Kirk could be found if you looked hard enough. Some NFL Stadiums held moments of silence. Richard Childress Racing put a decal on its cars memorializing Kirk. But when Kirk’s good friend Jack Posobiec published a recent episode of his Human Events Daily podcast, celebrating Kirk’s life, it was Bell’s winning dedication to Kirk that stood as the lone voice in sports speaking on the matter during the opening segment.
These NASCAR athletes live in a complicated and pressure-packed world. Fortune 500 companies adorn the cars they drive and the shoes they wear. Cancel culture is a notorious and pervasive element of the last decade or more. In NASCAR, any comment that upsets too many people could bring the end of a sponsorship, which can be a major detriment to a career or even the end of one.
For perhaps the first time in his career, I doubt Bell took the time to calculate what the reaction would be to his comment. Bell didn’t care about the extremes. Instead, he was being authentically him. He didn’t say it to gain positive attention, and he didn’t bite his tongue over fear of cancellation. He didn’t delve into policy or chastise anyone who disagreed with Kirk.
He simply said what he felt in his heart.
Bell, like most Americans, felt that nobody should be assassinated for the words they speak. He used his triumphant moment to voice support of the man who was killed while exercising free speech. It was a choice that deserves admiration.
Regardless of your opinions of Kirk, Bell’s words should be recognized as courageous and constructive to the greater good. He had an opportunity to say something he felt was important and seized it. The moment should have conveyed a message of unity, and boy, do we need unity in this country today.
In doing so, Bell gave a subtle hat tip to the reality we all live in. Violence is not the way to solve disagreements. Stifling free speech with a bullet is never the right way forward for humanity. It should be condemned by all, regardless of political persuasion. The division in America appears to be accelerating with each day, and the “tough week” Bell referenced is some of the strongest evidence we’ve seen thus far.
We all bear some level of responsibility to commit to living with our neighbors whom we disagree, to find common ground where we can and civilly disagree when we must. Athletes like Bell, right or wrong, have an amplified responsibility because of their tremendous visibility and the increasingly diverse fanbase of NASCAR.
If this simple statement led to the loss of some fans for Bell, it undoubtedly also earned many more new ones, even though that is surely not what he was aiming for — his private history makes that perfectly clear.
That made Bell one of the last people you’d expect to find stepping out on a limb to make such a courageous statement. But he rose to the occasion and showed that leadership can be found in many places, making the world a better place because of it. The courage required to dedicate his victory to Kirk was the exclamation point that birthed a star on Saturday night.
Steve Leffew joined Frontstretch in 2023 and covers the Xfinity Series. He has served honorably in the United States Air Force and and lives in Wisconsin.