Like many successful car racers, Bell nurtured and developed his passion for speed and competitive racing at an early age, with encouragement from his father Derek Bell, a five-time Le Mans 24 hours winner.
Bell began his racing career in 1988. In 1993, he was co-host of the motor sports television program 555 Performance World, which ran on Asia's largest satellite network Star TV and was seen by over 80 million viewers. This led to him hosting a six-part series, The International Young Driver of the Year on BBC television.
In 1997, Bell won the FIA GT2 Championship driving for Team Oreca in a Dodge Viper GTS-R. He won the GT2 class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1998 driving a Dodge Viper. In 2000, Bell signed with General Motors as a driver for the factory Corvette Racing team, finishing second in the Daytona 24 Hours, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Petit Le Mans.
Bell and his father raced together in the 1992 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 1995 24 Hours of Le Mans. He tried to qualify for the 1996 Indianapolis 500 in a four-year-old Lola chassis.
From 2001 to 2003, Bell raced in the Trans-Am Series, winning two major races at Houston and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and taking the Rookie of the Year title. From 2000 to 2004, Bell had his own racing school which trained pupils with Chevrolet Corvette cars. In 2009, Bell debuted as the driving instructor for the celebrities on The Jay Leno Show where he also interviewed the celebrity for the website.
Since 2005, Bell has worked frequently with Speed Channel (now Fox Sports 1) as a host of various live and format based TV shows, such as the Barrett Jackson Auctions, American Le Mans Series, Grand American Racing, IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, Test Drive and Shut up and Drive. Bell co-founded Torque Media Group in 2018 with Tommy Kendall and Jason Jacobson. Breaking with the traditional TV model the trio created The Torque Show as a branded Livestream Show to support Michelin in the IMSA Series. Evolving into a vibrant chat show style format, JB and TK interview the highest profile people in the Sportscar world, attracting a huge audience on their Facebook Live channel. Another series integrated into The Torque Show is 'The Love of Cars' presented by Hagerty, which has seen guests such as Jay Leno, Patrick Dempsey and Danny Trejo. Drawing on their experience in Live sports broadcasting, and led by the producing talents of Jason Jacobson, the company branched out into live event hosting with the Audrain Newport Concours and Motorweek and the honor of hosting and producing the livestream for the Pebble beach Concours d'Elegance in 2021.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus: a Wikipedia article titled “Justin Bell”. No external sources, including primary archives, autobiographies, period programmes, or specialist publications, were consulted.
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