By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service

For Christopher Bell, more horsepower means right direction for racing

LAS VEGAS, Nev.—Christopher Bell is so enamored of NASCAR’s new short-track competition package that he’d like to see a trial run with the higher-horsepower configuration at a 1.5-mile intermediate speedway.

Christopher Bell, driver of the #20 Interstate Batteries Toyota, poses for photos after winning the pole award during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 14, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

Bell finished second last Sunday at one-mile Phoenix Raceway and left with glowing accolades for the 750-horsepower, lower-downforce package in use at tracks shorter than 1.5 miles.

“I’m surprised by it, because I would have thought Phoenix was one of the race tracks that it really wasn’t going be able to tell the difference,” Bell said on Saturday morning at Las Vegas. “I can promise you that, if we’re feeling it at Phoenix, just wait till we get to Martinsville and Richmond, and on top of that, Darlington.

“But Darlington, it’s going to be a much greater change at Darlington because of the downforce package and the rules package that we’re taking there, so we’re getting more horsepower and less car potential. So, I think it’s going to be a massive difference in Darlington.

“And then, with what we’ve already found out at Phoenix, I love where we’re headed. I always think that we can use more, and I would love to get more horsepower, and hopefully this is an indication that we’re turning the right knob, and I think sky’s the limit. If we continue to add horsepower, I think we’re going to get right to where we need to be.”

Bell won last year’s spring race at Phoenix. Though he finished second to Ryan Blaney last Sunday, he thought the new short-track package produced the best racing the track has seen in the era of the Gen 7 Cup car and before.

“I thought Phoenix was night-and-day different than what we’ve had the last, well, since we’ve started going there,” Bell said. “It’s been really hard to pass, and this race was the first race I felt like you could actually make your way through the field if you had a better car.

“I proved that; Ryan Blaney proved that, it seemed like. If you had a better car, you were able to pass, and I think a lot of that was due to the horsepower, and the added horsepower made the track feel slick. The tires degraded. We were sliding around, and the best cars made their way to the front.

“I think Darlington is going to be more of the same.”

Corey Day. (Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images)

Despite rough start, Corey Day has believers in NASCAR, dirt racing ranks

Corey Day came to NASCAR racing with glittering credentials in the dirt-track sprint car world.

His adjustment to pavement racing in a full-bodied stock, however, has been difficult, to say the least.

Driving the No.17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet—the organization’s first full-time entry in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series since 2005—Day has drawn his share of criticism for on-track incidents from both fellow competitors and motorsports pundits.

On the positive side, Day has finished fourth, fifth and ninth in his last three starts and is eighth in the standings.

On the other hand, Day has left a trio of Hendrick-affiliated JR Motorsports drivers in his wake. At EchoPark Speedway, he slid up the track and collected Justin Allgaier and Carson Kvapil.

At Circuit of Americas in Austin, Texas, Day turned Connor Zilisch off the nose of his Camaro moments after Zilisch had passed him for fourth.

But those who know Day’s talent from the sprint car side of things urge patience with his acclimation to stock cars.

“From me versus Corey, it was similar but different,” said reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson. “I’m very fortunate, I believe, to have gotten my start in NASCAR the way I did. I came in, signed with Chip Ganassi Racing, ran a year of K&N East, which was only 12 races.

“The next year I transitioned into the Nationwide Series at the time (now NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series) with Turner Scott Motorsports. For me, I though that was great, because I didn’t have the pressure, I felt like, because I was with an underfunded team, if you want to call it that…

“I also went through a lot of the things I feel like (Day is) going through on that side of it, but social media wasn’t as big back then as it is now, and I wasn’t racing for a top team that everybody expected me to go light the world on fire and automatically live up to these big expectations.”

Larson thinks that, given time, Day will learn what he needs to learn.

“It’s a lot to take in in a very short amount of time, especially when you feel the pressure of being at Hendrick Motorsports,” Larson said.

Gio Scelzi, who competes against Day in 410 winged sprint cars, likewise believes Day’s talent will prevail.

“When he goes from 410 sprint cars to ARCA cars, Trucks and (O’Reilly Series), it’s a completely different realm, and nothing you do in a sprint car—how it handles—translates whatsoever to a stock car,” Scelzi said.

“I think he’s doing a great job, and I think you guys will have a treat seeing how he develops over the next 10, 15 years.”

Kyle Busch. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)

Kyle Busch hopes to duplicate speed—not mistakes—from 2025 Vegas race

Kyle Busch expects to use Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway as a barometer for intermediate tracks later in the 2026 schedule, but the fit won’t be precise.

“Yeah, just to kind of get a basis, I guess, of where you stack up against the field,” Busch said of Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 (4 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). “Your setup here at Vegas is not the same as Kansas, Texas, Charlotte or any of those.

“You’re pretty different at each one of these race tracks that you go to, so trying to pinpoint what allows us to be quicker and what allows us to be further up the pylon to compete—that’s what we’ve got to work on here this weekend to get ourselves in tune with the rest of the year.”

Busch showed excellent speed at Las Vegas in last year’s spring event, before his race fell apart.

“Last year here, this race was really good for us,” said Busch, whose winless streak at Richard Childress Racing has reached 97 races as he comes to his home track. “I thought we had really good speed. I think we qualified in the top 10 (fourth in fact). We were running fourth. We had a bad pit stop, and then we had a loose wheel, lost a tire, all that sort of stuff.

“So it just kind of derailed after the first time we hit pit road. Can’t have all that happen. Hopefully, we can have some of the same speed that we had here and go from there.”

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