Bell Gets His Hat Trick In Last-Lap Phoenix Thriller

AVONDALE, Ariz. – Christopher Bell reached elite status in the Next Gen era Sunday with his third straight NASCAR Cup Series win, but he had to work hard for it in the final laps at Phoenix Raceway.

Despite leading six times for a combined 105 laps in the Shriners Children’s 500, Bell had to fend off Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin on three late restarts at the one-mile desert oval.

The final dash – a green-white-checkered finish in regulation – saw Hamlin stay tight to Bell’s outside throughout lap 311 and use a shot of momentum from behind by Kyle Larson to lead at the white flag.

But Bell wasn’t about to give in. He cut the dogleg to get all the way back alongside Hamlin through turns one and two, then sailed his No. 20 off into turn three before just barely washing up into the side of Hamlin’s No. 11 coming off the final corner toward the checkered flag.

As Hamlin slid just shy of the outside wall, Bell eked out enough momentum to reach the finish line first by .049 seconds – the second-closest finish in Phoenix history and closest green-flag finish of the Cup Series season thus far.

With his second straight spring win at Phoenix, Bell became the first driver to win three races in a row since the introduction of the Next-Gen chassis. The last to win three consecutive Cup Series events prior to Bell was his longtime rival Larson, who did so twice during the 2021 campaign.

“How about that one, race fans? Oh, my gosh!” exclaimed Bell of his 12th career Cup Series victory after climbing from his Reser’s Fine Foods-sponsored Toyota on the frontstretch.

Bell re-took control of the race during a lap-270 cycle of pit stops, following the eighth caution flag of the day for Bubba Wallace’s blown right-front tire and hard crash into the wall.

However, Hamlin used slightly better jumps out of the restart zone to nip Bell on each of the last two restarts, coming with 17 and two laps left, respectively.

That led the eventual winner to describe his triumph as “ugly,” even though he ultimately hoisted the trophy in victory lane.

“Whenever you're sitting there dreaming it up, that’s about as ugly as it gets,” admitted Bell about the closing stages of the race. “You put the (last set of) red (softer option) tires on, and you’re like, ‘All right, what I don’t want to happen is for us to go 20 or 30 laps [and then] get a yellow. And that’s exactly what happened. Then we went 10 more laps and had another yellow.

“It was all about who could get clear on the restart,” he noted. “Neither of us, me or Denny, could really do that. We were racing really, really hard coming to the line. But JGR ran one-two; how about that?”

Notably, Sunday’s race was the third in as many days at Phoenix that ended with a last-lap pass, following Brent Crews’ Friday night score in the ARCA Menards Series and Aric Almirola’s Saturday victory in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

It also completed a weekend sweep of victories for car owner Joe Gibbs, a big deal since Bell’s run of three straight Cup Series triumphs is right on the heels of an eight-month stretch where the four-car JGR team failed to win a Cup Series race at all.

“Last year they were asking, ‘When is JGR going to win again?’ They’re not asking that anymore,” Bell said with a smile.

Hamlin’s runner-up finish marked his best result of the early Cup Series season and vaulted him from 17th to seventh in the regular season standings through four races.

The 21-year Cup Series veteran thought he might be able to steal the victory from under Bell’s nose,

“What a great job out of this Sport Clips team. The car got better and better as it went and our pit crew did a phenomenal job to keep us in the game when we had a bad stop in the middle [of the race],” Hamlin said. “They made up for it at the end. The late restarts were the first time we were able to get some clean air all day, and obviously, our car was really fast when we got up there.

“I really kind of wanted it to stay green there, because I thought the long runs were really where we were going to be able to excel, especially on these [softer] tires,” Hamlin added. “We got a good restart. The (No.) 5 (Larson) really gave me a great push on the frontstretch on the restart down the backstretch, to where I kind of had position on (Bell). But I knew he was going to ship it in there.

“He had to use me [up a bit]. Obviously, we just kind of ran out of racetrack. But it was a great finish.”

After lining up on the outside of row two for the final restart, Larson ended up third as the top three finishers crossed under the checkers within a tenth of a second of one another.

Josh Berry gave Wood Brothers Racing its first-ever top five at Phoenix by finishing fourth, ranking as the top Ford driver Sunday, followed by RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher.

Daytona 500 winner William Byron, home-state favorite Alex Bowman, Kyle Busch, Zane Smith, and Chase Elliott closed the top 10.

Defending Cup Series champion Joey Logano got pinged for a restart violation on lap 15 for dropping below the yellow line prior to start-finish and had to serve an early pass-through penalty down pit road.

Logano rallied to eventually lead 81 laps with his No. 22 Ford, but struggled late and finished 13th.

The biggest story of Sunday’s race was the availability of softer, red-sidewall ‘option’ tires in addition to the yellow-marked primary tires, the first time that multiple tire compounds were used at Phoenix in the current era of the Cup Series.

It made for numerous comers and goers throughout the 312-mile distance, but none did so more noticeably than Buescher’s RFK teammate Ryan Preece.

The Berlin, Conn., driver put on his first set of softs under the second yellow flag of the day at lap 10, early in the first stage, and drove from 33rd to third in 46 laps by the time the stage caution came out.

He saved his second and final set of reds for the seventh caution period at lap 215, racing from outside the top 10 to the lead and staying out front for 34 laps before getting overhauled on pit road following Wallace’s incident with 46 to go.

Preece faded from there as others put option tires on late in the race, ending up 15th.

Making her NASCAR Cup Series debut, four-time Indianapolis 500 starter Katherine Legge spun twice and eventually retired from the race after getting t-boned by Daniel Suarez on the backstretch at lap 215.

The 17th woman in history to start a race in NASCAR’s premier series, Legge was credited with 30th.

NASCAR Cup Series teams head next to Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway. Larson is the defending winner of the spring race at the 1.5-mile oval.

Broadcast coverage of the Pennzoil 400 is slated for Sunday, March 16 at 3:30 p.m. ET, live on FS1, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.