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Christopher Bell Edges Denny Hamlin At Phoenix To Win Third Consecutive NASCAR Cup Series Race

by Hunter Thomas March 9, 2025 0 comments

AVONDALE, Ariz. – Christopher Bell edged his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Denny Hamlin at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday to win the Shriners Children’s 500 and go back-to-back-to-back in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Bell has been on a tear early this season and even a race that featured an option tire didn’t deter the No. 20 Reser’s Fine Foods Toyota from reaching Victory Lane. Bell started 11^th, finished fourth in Stage 1 and won Stage 2. In the final 21 laps, Bell had to survive to late caution, one of which occurred with just fix laps remaining.

“Oh, my gosh, man,” Bell said. “Whenever you’re sitting there dreaming it up, that’s about as ugly as it gets. You put the red tires on, you’re like, All right, what I don’t want to happen is go 20, 30 laps, get a yellow. That happened. Then we went 10 more laps, had another yellow.”

On the final restart of the afternoon with just two laps to go, Bell and Hamlin raced side-by-side, and it wasn’t until the two drivers emerged from Turn 2 on the final lap when Bell took over the lead; however, Hamlin fought back on the high side. Bell slid up the track and made slight contact with Hamlin. Bell pulled back in front and held Hamlin off by 0.049 seconds en route to winning his third consecutive NASCAR Cup Series race.

“It was all about who could get clear on the restart,” Bell said. “Neither of us could. We were racing really, really hard there coming to the line. JGR ran 1-2, how about that?”

The runner-up finish marked Hamlin’s best effort of the season. In fact, the finish was Hamlin’s best a Phoenix Raceway since he won back in 2019. On Sunday, Hamlin was in position, but Bell pulled off the race-winning move.

“But we got a good restart,” Hamlin said. “The 5 (Kyle Larson) really gave me a great push on the frontstretch on the restart, down the backstretch. I had kind of position on the 20. I knew he was going to ship it in there. He had to use me. He could. Obviously we just kind of ran out of racetrack there. Great finish. Great job by the whole Joe Gibbs team to give us some fast cars.”

Larson nearly passed Denny Hamlin at the finish line, but he held on to finish third. The Hendrick Motorsports driver was fast, but he ran towards the back of the top-10 for most of the day. The effort is Larson’s second top-three finish of the season.

“Yeah, I felt like I made the correct decisions there,” Larson said. “I don’t know, I’d have to look back at it. I thought being patient to try and keep them side by side down the back was good. I could have shot to the bottom, but I felt like I would have wrecked everybody there. Yeah, just kind of gave ourselves a shot for them to maybe get into each other and us squeak by. Good to finish third. I felt like we were going to be lucky to finish top-10.”

Josh Berry finished a strong fourth, followed by Chris Buescher, William Byron, Alex Bowman, Kyle Busch, Zane Smith and Chase Elliott.

Throughout the day, there were 17 lead changes among six drivers. Bell led a race high of 105 laps.

The caution flew on 10 occasions for 73 laps.

The largest crash of the day occurred on Lap 100, when four-wide racing didn’t go well as the field exited Turn 2. Riley Herbst, Justin Haley, Chase Briscoe and Carson Hocevar were racing hard, when they ran out of space between them. Briscoe was sent into Hocevar who pounded the outside wall hard. Briscoe was then pancaked by Haley, so hard that a side window flew of out of the No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota. Shane Van Gisbergen, Brad Keselowski, Cole Custer and Austin Dillon were also involved.

Bell leads Bryon by 13 points in the standings.

The NASCAR Cup Series will visit Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, March 16 for the Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube. Live coverage of the race will broadcast on FS1 at 3:30 p.m. ET.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images