Christopher Bell, No. 20 team showing championship pedigree

Christopher Bell may have started the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season with a "checkers-or-wreckers" approach, but over the past five races, the No. 20 team has shown that it may be ripe for a third straight Championship 4 appearance. 

After Sunday's ninth-place finish at Sonoma, Bell sits fourth in NASCAR's playoff standings and ninth in the regular-season standings with 10 regular-season races remaining.  

Bell has taken a circuitous route to his solid standing.

The 29-year-old driver put on a dominant display at Phoenix on March 10, leading 50 laps en route to a win, but he struggled to find consistency over the season's first 11 races. 

After a third-place finish in the Daytona 500, two consecutive sub-30th-place finishes knocked him down to 21st in points. His Phoenix win started a streak of four straight top-10 finishes, which was then followed up by four straight finishes of 17th or worse. 

Kansas on May 5, however, proved to be a turning point for Bell and the No. 20 team. 

In what turned out to be a historic race, Bell won the pole, led five laps and finished sixth — his best effort since Richmond on March 31. While Darlington saw a rather pedestrian effort — Bell qualified 12th and finished 13th — a quiet, solid day was surely appreciated by a team looking for any sense of consistency. 

Two weeks later at Charlotte, Bell put together perhaps his best race of the season, as he won a rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600, leading 90 laps and picking up 67 of a possible 70 points. 

One week later, in St. Louis, Bell looked like the favorite to win, as he backed up a fourth-place qualifying effort by leading 80 laps and sweeping the stages. Only a late engine issue robbed Bell of going toe-to-toe with Ryan Blaney in the closing laps, but his underpowered motor still limped home with a solid seventh-place finish. 

At Sonoma, Bell again had a solid weekend, qualifying 15th and finishing ninth in a race that saw all three of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates finish no better than 27th. 

Bell has nine top-10 finishes in the Cup Series' first 16 races, a number that ties him for second in that category with Hendrick Motorsports drivers William Byron and Alex Bowman. 

For a No. 20 team with experience making runs to NASCAR's championship race, finding consistent speed and results are paramount for building momentum as the summer heats up. 

Bell has also gathered nine crucial playoff points over the past three races, and with four top-10 finishes over the past five weeks, he has finally turned the corner on a season that had everyone in the garage area puzzled. 

A few top-10 finishes in the middle of the summer don't guarantee a third straight championship race appearance for the No. 20 team, but they remind the Cup Series field why Bell has made the championship race two years in a row.

Nearly every week, Bell and his team are capable of winning.