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Bell Dazzles in Photo Finish Over Hamlin for 3rd Straight Cup Win

Toby Christie

Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

Ring the bell again, because Christopher Bell has done it another time. The driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry XSE led a race-high 105 laps, took the win in Stage 2, and then held off his teammate Denny Hamlin in a dramatic photo finish to take the win in Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series Shriners Children's 500 at Phoenix Raceway.

The win is Bell's third consecutive victory in NASCAR's top series, which makes him the first driver since the beginning of the Next Gen car era (2022) to accomplish three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series wins. For the 30-year-old, the three consecutive win mark is monumental.

"Three straight, it's surreal," Bell explained in his post-race victory press conference. "I will never forget 2021, my first year with Adam Stevens. Kyle Larson won three straight. Me and Adam got off to a rocky patch, rocky start. We're sitting in his office there at JGR. He looked at me and he said, We can do this. He said, I've won three straight sitting in these exact same two chairs, talking about him and Kyle Busch. I know we can do it.

"Took a while to get here, but we finally did it. I am just so proud. I'm so proud of all of the mechanics, the engineers, Adam, the pit crew members. Everybody on this 20 car. What you're seeing is everybody pulling the rope in the same direction, everybody doing their job to the best of their abilities. This is what I knew would come out of this team."

The win marks the 12th of Bell's 184-race NASCAR Cup Series career.

While the end result was a 1-2 finish for Joe Gibbs Racing, team owner Joe Gibbs admitted that he felt a little uneasy with his two ultra-competitive drivers battling each other in an attempt to reach victory lane on Sunday.

"‘Nervous’ isn’t probably a good word for it. I was ready to upchuck," Gibbs quipped. "One of the things I always worry about when we get two of our cars up there, because that can make for an intense meeting tomorrow at 2:00. I can tell you that. Hey, they raced it out. It looked like nobody took unfair advantage. Just appreciate that. I think for the last two weeks in a row, we’ve had great finishes to races with people having a chance to show their skill and yet get it done the right way."

On a day where multiple tire compounds created an interesting strategic wrinkle in the way the race played out, the cream found a way to rise to the top as the end of the race saw Bell versus Hamlin, and Kyle Larson crossed the finish line less than a tenth-of-a-second behind Bell in third.

Bell was just happy to escape with the win after a late-race caution brought his sure-fire win into question.

"Whenever you're sitting there dreaming it up, that's about as ugly as it gets," Bell said. "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."

Hamlin, who got mired in the field due to a rough pit stop in the middle stages of the race, thanked his pit crew for knocking out their best stops of the day when it mattered most. Unfortunately, Hamlin's hope for a long green flag run to end the race was thwarted by a caution for fluid on the track on Lap 290, and a crash by his teammate Ty Gibbs on Lap 305.

"Yeah, great job out of this Sport Clips team. Got better and better as it went. Pit crew did a phenomenal job to keep us in the game when we had a bad stop in the middle. They made up for it at the end," Hamlin said. "First time we were able to get some clean air all day. 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."

Even though the race didn't run green to the end, Hamlin found himself in a position to nearly win the race, but Bell just had enough to pull it off by 0.049 seconds.

"We got a good restart. The 5 really gave me a great push on the frontstretch on the restart, down the backstretch. I kind of had a position on [Bell]," Hamlin said. "I knew he was going to ship it in there. [If] 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."

Behind the trio of Bell, Hamlin, and Larson was Josh Berry, who captured an impressive fourth-place finish in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse. While Berry had great runs in the season-opening Daytona 500, and the following week at Atlanta, he was unable to walk away with the finishes he deserved. Sunday, at Phoenix, he finally got a finish he deserved.

RFK Racing's Chris Buescher got his first top-five finish of the season with a solid fifth-place run. Buescher now has three top-10 finishes through the opening four races of the 2025 season.

Polesitter, and Stage 1 winner William Byron would finish sixth after leading 83 laps on the day, and he'd be followed to the finish line by Alex Bowman, Kyle Busch, Zane Smith, and Chase Elliott.

The biggest crash of the day occurred on Lap 99 when a nine-car melee ensued in Turn 2. Ty Gibbs, who was running on the inside of a four-wide battle, would collide with Justin Haley, which sent Haley into Chase Briscoe, which sent Briscoe into Carson Hocevar.

Briscoe's car would lift off of the ground briefly, and then the three cars above Gibbs would slam hard into the outside wall, which caused a log-jam in the middle of the track. By the time the dust settled, Brad Keselowski, Rookie of the Year contenders Riley Herbst and Shane van Gisbergen, Cole Custer, Noah Gragson, and Austin Dillon would all find themselves involved in the carnage.

The crash spelled the end of the day for van Gisbergen, Herbst, Custer, Keselowski, Haley, Briscoe, and Hocevar.

Katherine Legge had an eventful NASCAR Cup Series debut. The first female racer to start a NASCAR Cup Series race since 2018 made an error on Lap 4, and spun out her No. 78 Live Fast Motorsports Chevrolet, but was able to avoid damage.

However, Legge would have a second incident on Lap 215, where she wouldn't be nearly as fortunate. Legge, five laps off the pace, was attempting to race fifth-place Josh Berry, when she made contact on the exit of Turn 2. This sent Legge spinning, and sixth-place Daniel Suarez had nowhere to go, and slammed into Legge's No. 78 machine.

Legge's race would end with that crash, and she would be credited with a 30th-place finish in the 37-car field. Suarez, who looked to have a top-10 car, all race long, would finish a disappointing 23rd.

Up next for the NASCAR Cup Series is a trip to Las Vegas Motor Speedway next weekend, where the series will contest the fifth race of its 36-race schedule. The Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas is scheduled for Sunday, March 16, and will be televised on FS1 with coverage kicking off at 3:30 PM ET.

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Toby Christie
TOBY CHRISTIE

Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.

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