Biography
Townsend Bell started racing go-karts at the age of 12 and spent the next six years competing in regional and national events. After graduating from college, he attended a three-day Skip Barber school in 1996 and decided his future was in racing. Armed with ambition and a stack of business cards, he set out to make his dreams a reality.
Bell secured the necessary funding to contest the Skip Barber Formula Dodge Western Championship the following year and began his climb up the racing ladder. The wins followed. Formula Dodge led to the Barber Dodge Pro Series followed by two years in the Indy Lights Championship. It was there that Bell began to draw attention. He finished second in the 2000 championship – only nine points behind winner Scott Dixon – and secured the champion’s title in 2001 over Dan Wheldon.
Also in 2001, merely five years since beginning his professional driving career, Bell made his debut at the top rung of U.S. motorsports. He contested a pair of races in the CART FedEx Championship Series driving for Patrick Racing in Germany and England. Both grids were determined by championship standings due to qualifying rain-outs and despite starting at the back of the field, Bell managed to score his first points in the series in only his second career start with a 12th-place drive at Brands Hatch.
He continued with Patrick Racing in 2002 to contest a nine-race season aboard the Toyota-powered Visteon machine. Despite the lack of a teammate in his rookie campaign, Bell managed to impress with a fourth-place finish at Portland and seventh-place drive at Laguna Seca.
Bell embarked on an overseas foray the following year with the championship-winning Arden International team in the 2003 FIA Formula 3000 Championship. Amongst a strong field which included current Formula 1 driver Vitantonio Liuzzi and Le Mans star Nicolas Minassian, Bell finished second in the rookie standings and became the first American to score an F3000 podium.
His talents led to limited roles as a test driver for the BAR/Honda and Jaguar Formula 1 teams, and he expanded his dossier off the race track by making his television debut as a color commentator for SPEED Channel’s U.S. Formula 1 broadcasts.
Bell returned stateside in 2004 to compete in the IndyCar Series with Panther Racing. Driving the Menards/Johns Manville Racing entry, he finished half of the 10 races entered in the top-10 with a best result of fifth to become the highest-finishing Chevrolet driver that season. He also continued his role as a test driver with BAR/Honda and expanded his commentary work to include IndyCar Series broadcasts on Europe’s Sky Sports.
After marrying Heather Campbell in 2003, Bell shifted his focus to that of a family man and has spent the last five years in a limited role within the IndyCar Series. He has competed in the Indianapolis 500 where he finished fourth last year with KV Racing Technology and contested a partial IndyCar season for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing in 2008. He launched Townsend Bell Sponsorship Coaching in 2009 to bring his knowledge and expertise of the sponsorship world to drivers, teams and sponsors.
In 2010, he is entered to make his fourth Indianapolis 500 start driving for Sam Schmidt Motorsports as a co-entry for Target Chip Ganassi Racing.
