It’s Christopher Bell’s racing world these days, and all of NASCAR is just following him around in it.
The Joe Gibbs Racing standout nipped teammate Denny Hamlin in a two-lap dash at Phoenix Raceway, notching his third straight win Sunday at the NASCAR Cup Series’ Shriners Children’s 500 in Avondale, Ariz.
A force all day in his No. 20 Toyota, Bell became the first driver to win three consecutive races since Kyle Larson won at Charlotte, Texas and Kansas in October 2021 on the way to his lone Cup title.
After 13th-place Ty Gibbs hit the wall for the 10th caution period, Bell restarted beside Hamlin and barely held off the No. 11 Toyota over two laps, topping it by 0.049 seconds for Bell’s 12th career victory.
Bell finished 31st in the season-opening Daytona 500. Since then, it has been nothing but checkers in Atlanta, Austin and the Arizona desert.
“Whatever you’re sitting there dreaming up, that’s about as ugly as it gets,” said the Oklahoma native, who led a race-high 105 laps. “You put the red (option) tires on it. What I don’t want to happen is go 20 or 30 laps and get a yellow. Then that happened. Then we went 10 more laps and another yellow.
“It was all about who could get clear on the restart. Neither of us could.”
Of his first top five this season, Hamlin said he wanted to get out in clear air.
“We just got better and better as it went,” said Hamlin. “It was the first time we were able to get clean air all day, and we were really fast. … (Larson) really gave me a great push.
“I knew (Bell) was going to just ship it in there. He had to use me, and he could. We just kind of ran out of race track there.”
Larson, Josh Berry and Chris Buescher completed the top five.
Shortly after polesitter William Byron started the 312-lap race, last-place starter Katherine Legge — the first woman to compete in a Cup race in over seven years — spun by herself off Turn 2 on Lap 4 for the first caution but eventually finished 30th.
Leader Joey Logano got caught preparing to cut the corner of Turn 1 on a restart and dipped below the start-finish line, sending the No. 22 Ford nearly 22 seconds back in the field after serving a subsequent penalty.
With Logano out of the picture, Byron raced off and led at Lap 60 when Stage 1 ended. Tyler Reddick and Ryan Preece trailed him, with Preece having taken the softer, grippier “option” tires to move up from 33rd into third.
Austin Cindric made the same tire selection to start Stage 2, and the No. 2 Ford moved forward with the extra grip past leader Byron on Lap 89. Justin Haley’s No. 7 Chevrolet also entered the top five just before Michael McDowell’s No. 71 Chevy cut a right-rear tire to create the fourth caution.
The first big wreck occurred on Lap 99 on the back straightaway when Haley, Chase Briscoe, Carson Hocevar and Gibbs went four-wide exiting Turn 2 in an incident involving approximately 10 cars.
On the softer tires, Logano diced through the field and grabbed the point from Bell on Lap 130 of the second segment as Bell and Bryon slotted behind, but the tires’ fall-off allowed the Joe Gibbs Racing driver to regain the top spot on Lap 178 and win Stage 2. Logano and Byron were second and third, respectively.
Legge brought out the seventh caution by spinning and then getting T-boned by Daniel Suarez’s No. 99 with 97 to go.
–Field Level Media
