Christopher Bell is having a great 2026 NASCAR season. He regularly puts his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in a position to win. But Bell was not in the mood to celebrate after Sunday’s Eero 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. He finished second behind his teammate, Chase Briscoe. Instead of being happy with a good points day, Bell blamed himself. He said that even though he has driven race-winning cars, he hasn’t performed well enough when it counts most.

So near…yet so far for Christopher Bell (again)

“Our cars are amazing. We have the fastest car. A lot is great, and I’m not winning the races. I guess I had the track position at Nashville, and I still lost the race. So it goes both ways. We’ve lost them every way possible. And yeah. I mean, it’s just, I’m not good enough.”

After finishing second again at Chicagoland Speedway, Christopher Bell did not blame his crew, his crew chief, or poor luck. Rather, the driver for Joe Gibbs Racing gave one of the most critical evaluations of his career, claiming that even if he has driven some of the fastest cars in the NASCAR Cup Series, he hasn’t finished the job frequently enough.

During the final 10 laps at Chicagoland, Bell chased down Briscoe. The gap shrank lap after lap. But Briscoe and his crew chief, James Small, managed the track conditions perfectly. Briscoe defended the best racing line to hold Bell off.

Ultimately, Chase Briscoe finished just 0.276 seconds ahead of Christopher Bell. And Bell had nothing but admiration for the race winner, even though he was so close to the win.

“I mean, just track decision. You know, he was out front and had the lead and threw, you know, a couple good blocks on me. I mean, just him and Drew did really good at blocking, and you know the game was on the line. The race was on the line, and he knew that. I knew that. I didn’t get it done.”

However, the Chicagoland finish isn’t the only letdown this season. Christopher Bell has continuously positioned himself to win during the first half of the 2026 season. Even though he now has eight top-five finishes, including four runner-up performances, his dissatisfaction has only grown as a result of those close calls.

Nashville was perhaps the most painful. Bell led a thrilling four-lap overtime shootout on May 31 and looked certain to win the Cracker Barrel 400. However, he overdrove Turn 1 on the last lap, failed to maintain his Toyota on the desired line, and allowed Denny Hamlin to dive underneath and grab the win. Bell didn’t hide from that mistake either.

“I didn’t need anything. My car was amazing. Had the right strategy, the right everything. And I just did not win the race. I didn’t do a good job of driving, and I got no one to blame but myself,” Bell told the media after the race.

That way of thinking hasn’t changed. Christopher Bell was uninterested in moral triumphs, as Joe Gibbs Racing celebrated a commanding 1-2-3 result at Chicagoland with Briscoe, Bell, and Hamlin. Finishing second in one of the quickest cars on the grid is insufficient for a driver vying for a title.

And by Christopher Bell’s own standards, that’s a problem only he believes he can fix.