By Michael Seff, Sports Editor
2012-12-13
Pacific Palisades resident Townsend Bell was 10 years old when he attended the Indy 500, the largest single-day sporting event in the world and something he calls a life-changing experience. As his father, who had always enjoyed listening to the race on the radio growing up, flew with Townsend from San Francisco to Indianapolis to enjoy the race from the grandstand.
With his interest piqued, Bell began racing go-karts at age 12, right around the time his family relocated from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo, and he realized he had a knack for keeping his wits while behind the wheel.
‘Even then it was something I was really passionate about,’ Bell told the Palisadian-Post. ‘When I first started racing go-karts I realized I had a reasonable amount of natural ability for driving fast, [so] I really started focusing on it as a goal.’
Though not one to label himself a ‘daredevil’ in his youth, Bell recalled telling one of his school teachers his desire to become a stuntman when he grew up. (In 2005, Bell got to live out that dream with a stuntman role in the movie ‘Dukes of Hazzard.’)
Bell played soccer in high school, but his primary athletic focus was racing. He attended college at UC Santa Barbara and completed nearly three years before he decided to concentrate solely on racing. At 21, he attended the Skip Barber Racing School in Laguna Seca, where in three days he earned a certificate that would help garner sponsors, which is one of the difficult challenges in the sport of auto racing. Drivers must not only compete on the track, they need to find sponsors in order to participate.
‘That was probably the hardest part initially ‘ how to finance your career,’ Bell said. ‘In a sport like baseball, you need a glove and a bat and you’re good to go, but racing is a little bit different. You need an eye for how to make a deal and create an opportunity for your sponsors to get a lot of value.’
Officially beginning his professional career in 1997, Bell began to make headway in 2000 when he finished second in the developmental Indy Lights Championship series, just nine points behind winner Scott Dixon. One year later, Bell secured first at Indy Lights, outperforming Dan Wheldon, which enabled him to graduate to the premier IndyCar series, where he made his debut in September 2001. Traveling to Germany for that race, his flight overseas landed on September 11, adding chaos to what was already an emotional time for Bell.
‘It was overwhelming because it was a dramatic time for anybody, especially being a foreigner out of the country at the time, and on top of that doing my first Indy car race. And there was a terrible accident in the race, so it was just this rollercoaster of emotions for four or five days and I remember thinking, ‘Am I ready for this’? But it all worked out.’
Bell finished 13th in Germany and this led to sponsorship. In 2004, he competed in the IndyCar Series with Panther Racing and Chevrolet, finishing five of the 10 races in which he participated. Then in 2009, Bell returned to the track where his racing aspirations were born when he competed in the Indy 500 and finished fourth. He was 16th in 2010, qualified with the fourth fastest time in 2011 but finished 26th and was ninth in 2012.
But it was a race in October 2011 that truly brought things into perspective. At the IZOD IndyCar World Championship in Las Vegas, a fiery 15-car accident killed Wheldon and forced a postponement of the race. Bell came away unharmed but it was a reminder of the risks and dangers associated with the sport.
‘You’re aware of the risks,’ Bell said. ‘So hopefully you make sound decisions based on risk versus reward, but the reality is that it would be safer to go 60 mph than 230, [but] we do everything we can to protect ourselves.
’I’ve been very lucky in racing. I’ve had a couple of big crashes and been lucky to walk away from those. [The crash in Las Vegas] was about the biggest crash in the history of Indy car racing.’
Bell added that racing officials have taken a much more sophisticated approach to preventing serious head injuries, such as designing safer helmets based upon studies that measure the G-force when a driver’s head is impacted.
To stay in shape when he’s away from the course, Bell takes full advantage of the Palisades environment by mountain biking in the Santa Monica Mountains. As it is currently the offseason for racing, he spends most of his time here, also lifting weights in addition to cardio. He keeps an office in the 881 Alma Real building to work on business and sponsorship.
Bell and his wife, Heather, have two sons, Jaxon, 9, and Jensen, 7, who attend Palisades Elementary. The boys play flag football at the Palisades Recreation Center and participate in the Pacific Palisades Baseball Association. The family relocated to the Palisades from Santa Monica in 2010.
Heather is an actress and a realtor for Valnes Bell, a Westside company. Her television credits include ‘Police Academy,’ ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Melrose Place.’