His second visit to the IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals at Iowa’s Boone Speedway in September did not go well for Justin Bell. The sport mod driver saw his hopes of making the big show end in turn two with this heat-race incident.
“I got clipped in the left rear, and the next thing I knew the front end dug in,” said Bell, of Louisville, Nebraska. “I went end over end two times.”
Bell sustained no injuries. He sat in a full-containment seat from Ultra Shield Race Products, with an Impact five-point harness holding him in. Bell wore a Bell helmet with a Profox Racing helmet support collar.
The accident bent the rear clip of the car from Razor Chassis. Bell returned to racing two weeks later at RPM Speedway in Hays, Kansas.
“We missed out on the Super Nationals — again,” Bell said. “We had bad luck last year, too. We blew an engine in the second A-main qualifier.”
Bell competes regularly at US 30 Speedway in Columbus, Nebraska. Typically, it’s just him and his father, Greg, who owns the car and serves as crew chief. Regardless of venue, the father-and-son team seemed to find misfortune in 2020, in a variety of ways.
“We had two blown engines this past season, but after we got through with that, we were able to play with our setup and get faster,” Bell said. “When we had bad luck, we got right back out there and kept racing.”
After a disappointing Super Nationals, Justin Bell eagerly awaits his next turn behind the wheel of a race car. He, like many others, hopes to put 2020 in the rear-view mirror and looks forward to the new year. Bell plans to begin his racing season at Beatrice Speedway in Nebraska, with the Spring Nationals in March.
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
