Christopher Bell Continues Dream Start to Season, Wins at Phoenix

It may not have been a dream scenario for Christopher Bell on Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, but the outcome continued a dream start to his 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season.

Bell held off Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin as well as Kyle Larson on a late restart to win Sunday’s Shriners Children’s 500. Bell has now won three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series races, the first to accomplish that since the series’ incorporation of the Next Gen car in the 2022 season.

It’s hard to imagine a better start to the season for Bell, but Sunday’s race played out exactly how he didn’t want. With the added strategy of two sets of “option” tires for each team offering faster speeds but more tire wear, Bell originally wanted a longer green-flag run after a caution with 100 laps to go.

Instead, the caution flag flew as Bubba Wallace suffered a flat tire and hit the outside wall on lap 268. This threw a wrench into everyone’s strategy, but Bell claimed and maintained the lead on the restart.

On lap 295, an engine failure for Ryan Blaney brought out the caution once more, putting pressure on Bell from Hamlin.

The final caution of the afternoon, which came as a result of Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Ty Gibbs, set up a green-white-checkered fight to the finish for Bell and Hamlin.

They battled side-by-side to the checkered flag, which Bell claimed by 0.049 seconds.

“Whenever you’re sitting there dreaming it up, that’s about as ugly as it gets,” said Bell. “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. It was all about who could get clear on the restart. Neither of us could. We were racing really, really hard there coming to the line. JGR ran 1-2, how about that?”

Hamlin composed the second half of that Joe Gibbs Racing 1-2, earning his first top-five finish of the season. He was in the right place at the end of the race, but just couldn’t find a way around his teammate for the win.

“First time we were able to get some clean air all day,” said Hamlin. “Obviously our car was really fast. Really kind of wanted it to stay green there ’cause I thought in the long runs is really where we were going to be able to excel, especially on these tires.

“But we got a good restart. The 5 [of Larson] really gave me a great push on the frontstretch on the restart, down the backstretch. I had, kind of, position on the 20 [of Bell]. 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.”

Meanwhile, Larson settled for third after watching the Joe Gibbs Racing teammates battle for the win, hoping they’d open the door for him to slip by for the victory.

“I felt like that was my only hope,” said Larson. “Yeah, I felt like I made the correct decisions there. 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.”

Bell is now the first driver to win three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series events in the Next Gen era. Before Sunday’s race, Larson was the last driver to win three races in a row, dating back to his 2021 championship season.

Josh Berry finished fourth in the Wood Brothers Racing No. 21 after an impressive showing throughout Sunday’s race, his first top-five finish of the season. Chris Buescher rounded out the top five.

The next stop for the NASCAR Cup Series is Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the Pennzoil 400, which will take place next Sunday, March 16 at 3:30 PM ET on FS1, PRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.

-Photo credit: John K Harrelson, LAT for Toyota Gazoo Racing