AVONDALE, Ariz. — It’s easy to wonder why any driver would consider declining a ride in Toyota’s development program and with one of the country’s premier dirt track teams.
But it wasn’t that simple of a decision 10 years ago for Christopher Bell.
He had a ride in another series that, he hoped, would lead him to the World of Outlaws sprint car series. But after some thought, Bell changed his mind. He joined Toyota’s program and took the seat vacated by Kyle Larson, beginning a path to NASCAR.
Sunday, Bell and Larson will comprise half the Championship 4 field at Phoenix Raceway — the first time two drivers with dirt racing backgrounds have competed for a Cup title in the current playoff format. They might not have gotten to this point without the help of an Indiana-based midget team.
“Out of 36 Cup drivers or whatever, there’s two that made it from the same kind of stable is just a remarkable, remarkable thing,” said Jack Irving, executive commercial director for Toyota Racing Development. “It would be like two elite basketball players coming from the same high school at the same time.”
Keith Kunz, co-owner of Keith Kunz Motorsports, whose team Larson and Bell raced for, isn’t surprised with where they are today.
“We just felt that in our hearts that that day would come that they would go head-to-head for a (NASCAR) championship,” he told NBC Sports.
Should either Larson or Bell win the Cup championship Sunday (3 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock), it will mark the second time in three years that the champion will have driven for Kunz’s team through the Toyota driver development program.
“It’s pretty neat that two dirt guys … are getting to race for a championship in Phoenix,” said Larson, the 2021 Cup champion. “Hopefully, one of us can get it and make the dirt world proud.”
Eye-catching talent
Kunz easily recalls the first time he saw Larson. It was 2010 at Perris Auto Speedway, a half-mile banked clay oval in California. Kunz didn’t know who he was watching, just that it was someone special.
“I just watched him back there, running about eighth or so and there was just something about him … something I could see about his car control,” Kunz said.
Larson was 18 but Kunz said the driver looked more like he was 14. Kunz later found out who Larson was. During the 2011 Chili Bowl, Kunz told co-owner Pete Willoughby to watch Larson in practice.
It didn’t take long before Willoughby told Kunz “that’s our guy.”
Willoughby and Kunz had been aligned with Toyota since 2009 and the manufacturer relied on them to find drivers for its development program.
While Larson is noted for his natural talent, Kunz saw the driver’s work ethic, noting how often Larson watched video of his runs after coming off the track and how well Larson managed tires.
“You knew things were good over the horizon if he ever got that opportunity,” Kunz said of Larson.
Larson continued with Kunz’s team in 2012, driving a variety of dirt cars while also winning the K&N Pro Series East championship that season. With no defined path to move up at Toyota, Larson joined Chevrolet in 2013 and went to Cup in 2014 with Chip Ganassi Racing.
Larson’s departure made Toyota executives reassess their development program and create a stepladder system to feed talented drivers up the chain.
That would benefit Bell, who would be next in line — once he decided to join Kunz’s team and Toyota.
The decision
Bell sat in the stands with Willoughby in January 2013 at the Chili Bowl. Willoughby and Kunz wanted Bell to take the ride Larson had left, but Bell was few weeks away from starting a full-time ride in the All-Star sprint car series.
“We want to hire you,” Bell recalls Willoughby telling him that January day. “We want you to be our guy. But there’s no promises. If we get to April, May and we’re not doing good, then … we’re probably going to go our separate directions.”
Bell had to decide if he wanted to go midget car racing with Keith Kunz Motorsports or race a bigger, more powerful sprint car. Bell wanted a commitment for the full season if he went with the midget car team. Willoughby couldn’t give it to him at that point.
“The hard part for me was it didn’t really feel like I was taking a step up,” Bell told NBC Sports of the midget car opportunity. “… I completely understand what Pete was telling me because if I get in his car and I don’t do good, it’s making me and it’s making them look bad, so it’s in both of our best interest to part ways. Fortunately, it didn’t work out like that.”
Bell took the gamble. It was decision that changed his life.
After success with Keith Kunz Motorsports, Bell moved through Toyota’s ranks, claiming the 2017 Truck championship, winning 15 of 66 Xfinity races in 2018-19 and becoming the only Cup driver to make it to the Cup Championship 4 the past two seasons.
Right combination
That the path to NASCAR could go through a dirt midget race team based in Columbus, Indiana — hometown of NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart — shows the strength of Keith Kunz Motorsports. Consider it the Hendrick Motorsports or Joe Gibbs Racing of midget car racing. So it was a natural for Toyota to partner with the team as the manufacturer looked to bolster its development program.
“You want to take out as many variables as you can,” Tyler Gibbs, general manager of Toyota Racing Development, told NBC Sports. “So you’re looking for teams that can perform consistently well, so that you can evaluate the variable that is the driver and how they develop. I think you look at (Keith Kunz Motorsports), they certainly fit that bill.”
Gibbs also noted how Kunz and Willoughby worked with their drivers.
“Pete and Keith are two different personality types,” Gibbs said. “So they work well with certain kids. If they need someone like Keith, then Keith works well with them. If they need someone like Pete, then Pete works with them.
Bell was a student of Kunz.
“One thing that he really, really, really taught me was to focus on driving the racecar to the best of your ability and it was so different compared to every other team that I had been with and the majority of teams out there,” Bell said. “The driver would be part of the team and have to help wash, help work on the cars, help with setup stuff. That was opposite of Keith’s mentality.
“Keith’s mentality was ‘I handle the car. You drive the car. If I give you the best car of my ability and you drive to the best of your ability, we’re going to have success.’ That really stuck with me.”
It’s an adage Bell has discussed throughout the playoffs and came true in his victory two weeks ago at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Bell won after struggling in the second stage and falling back as far as 22nd. A fortunate caution in the last stage put Bell in position to win the race and secure his spot in the Championship 4.
Kunz’s words were evident when Bell talked to the media after the Homestead victory.
“I’ve always been one that says that the car is everything,” Bell said that day. “The driver’s job is to maximize the car. If the car is fast, you do good. If the car is slow, you do bad.”
Who is next?
While Larson and Bell represent a triumph in two drivers coming through Toyota’s development program on the dirt, there hasn’t been another driver reach Cup through that same path.
It does lead to the question of if having a dirt element in Toyota’s development program remains feasible.
“If we’re not looking, nobody else is,” Irving told NBC Sports. “So for me, dirt has a massive amount of value. We’ve branched out and we’ve looked in multiple places, which makes probably getting through our program harder. But dirt is still a pretty material part of what we do.”
Toyota continues to have success in dirt. Jade Avedisian, 17, became the first woman to win a national championship in dirt racing last month in the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series while running with Keith Kunz Motorsports.
Irving views dirt racing as valuable because of the lessons drivers learn competing on the ever-changing surface.
“I think it’s a massive part of car control,” Irving said. “You see the dirt guys, for whatever reason, they win on every track. You look at Kyle and Christopher and you look at all the different races, the tracks they’ve won at. You look at Tony (Stewart), you look at Jeff (Gordon). They’re road course great. They’re circle track great. They’re short track great.”
All six of Bell’s Cup wins have come at different types of tracks: He’s won on the Daytona road course, New Hampshire (flat 1-mile track), Charlotte Roval, Bristol dirt, Martinsville (short track) and Homestead (1.5-mile speedway).
Should Bell add Phoenix to his win list or Larson win a second title, it will give the dirt community reason to celebrate and dream.
“I hope that it just shows that the path is there,” Bell said. “I get frustrated in a sense that people believe that money is how you get to the top. … Hopefully, my story and Larson’s story prove that if you separate yourself from the competition and you win races when you have the opportunity to win races, you’re going to get opportunities.
“Pete always told me that winners won’t be denied and that’s what I’ve lived by my entire life. If you win enough races, you won’t be denied.”
2. No changes planned for 19 team
Car owner Joe Gibbs said this week that there won’t be any leadership changes with Martin Truex Jr.’s team after its playoff struggles.
Truex won the regular-season championship but had a miserable playoffs. He narrowly avoided elimination in the first and second rounds before he was eliminated last weekend in the third round.
Truex has one top-10 finish in the nine playoff races. His average finish in the playoffs is 19.8 — eight spots worse than his average finish in the regular season.
“I don’t remember a time like this where we struggled, yet were as fast as we were, qualified on poles and stuff, yet could not get to the finish line with it,” Gibbs said.
It has been a variety of issues that plagued Truex and his team in the playoffs, ranging from a cut tire in one race and engine failure in another to decision making by crew chief James Small in a race.
The struggles come after a 2022 season where Truex failed to make the playoffs.
“I think the thing about Martin, if you’re going to normally have issues and want changes, it would have started last year when we don’t win a race,” Gibbs said. “Martin, I tell you, that guy comes every single week, he never second-guesses stuff. He’ll be mad during the race, like anybody would be. He’s got a temper, all of that plays out.
“Honestly, during the weeks after that, some of the toughest things for that guy to have experienced in a race car, he does such a great job of keeping his balance with it. He never really, that I’ve heard it, second-guesses things.”
3. Kyle Larson not a fan of sims
Kyle Larson’s preparation for Sunday’s Cup championship has not included sim work with Phoenix Raceway.
“I’m not comfortable with it,” he said of the simulator. “I feel like when I get in it, I’m re-learning how to drive.
“It doesn’t feel like a Cup car to me. Other drivers, they live by it. It doesn’t suit my driving style, I guess, or my eyes, my brain and my butt.
“I get frustrated more than anything in there, and I don’t learn anything and then I go to the track and second-guess everything. That’s why I don’t use it.”
Larson was the first driver to secure a spot in the Championship 4 with his win two weeks ago at Las Vegas. He said during the week leading up to Martinsville that he watched video of past Phoenix races and studied driver data, using that instead of sim work to prepare for the title race.
4. Middle seat
William Byron arrived in Phoenix on Wednesday sitting in a middle seat near the back of a commercial airplane.
“That was all that was left,” Byron said. “I hit the upgrade button but nothing was available. I was like, Row 29 with a middle seat. It was a long flight.”
Byron said he didn’t want to jinx himself so he bought the ticket late. One advantage was that he arrived in Phoenix early enough to attend Game 5 of the World Series in Phoenix.
Still, couldn’t he have asked a driver or team that was coming out early to Phoenix on a private plane for a ride?
“Man, I’m soft-spoken,” Byron said. “I don’t like to ask. I should have asked somebody, but I just kind of wanted to come out low-key.”
Things were low-key for Byron until he passed through first class of the plane and a couple recognized him.
“They were like, ‘Oh, good luck, you’re going to win,’” Byron said. “I was like, ‘OK, I got to keep moving here so I can get back to my seat back there.’”
5. Ford’s homegrown talent in title contention
While Ford’s driver development program is not as robust as Toyota’s, Ford will have homegrown talent compete for the Cup and Xfinity championships this weekend.
Cole Custer has been in the Ford program since moving to the Xfinity Series in 2017 with Stewart-Haas Racing. That was the same year SHR switched from Chevrolet to Ford.
Ryan Blaney has been connected to Ford even longer. He drove for Brad Keselowski Racing’s Ford team in the Truck Series in 2013, Blaney’s first full-time season in that series. He competed there full-time until 2015 when he ran select races in Cup (Wood Brothers Racing), Xfinity (Team Penske) and Trucks (Brad Keselowski Racing).
This is Blaney’s eighth full-time season in Cup and sixth with Team Penske.
“For us, a lot of our development drivers have been done with teams, it’s not always just been a Ford thing,” Mark Rushbrook, global director, Ford Performance, told NBC Sports.
He said that has worked for Ford and provided a way to develop young drivers, which includes Blaney, Custer and Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric.
Toyota’s development program has had instances where it has talented drivers but nowhere to move them and that’s played a role in some competitors going to another manufacturer.
“The last thing we want to do is have all these drivers coming through and nowhere to put them, which is what you see happening in other places,” Rushbrook said. “It’s more about the quality and the right driver, right time for us.”