Christopher Bell made history Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, outdueling teammate Denny Hamlin to become the first Cup driver to win three consecutive races in the Next Gen era.
Bell held off Hamlin on a two-lap restart shootout that ended the race on the 1-mile oval. Kyle Larson, the most recent Cup driver to win three in a row in 2021, finished third.
With a pass on the final lap, Bell beat Hamlin by 0.049 seconds, the second-closest Cup finish in Phoenix Raceway history. The Joe Gibbs Racing star’s No. 20 Toyota also was in victory lane the past two weeks at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Circuit of the Americas.
“How about that one, race fans? Oh, my gosh, man,” Bell told FS1’s Regan Smith. “Whenever you’re sitting there dreaming it up, that’s about as ugly as it gets. You put the )(softer) 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?”
Bell, who led six times for a race-high 105 of 312 laps, chose the inside lane for the final restart (which was set up by a crash involving JGR driver Ty Gibbs), and Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota held the lead at the white flag. But Bell managed to recapture first during the final circuit for his 12th career victory.
It’s the third last-lap pass for a victory in four races this season (Bell has two at Phoenix and Atlanta Motor Speedway; William Byron won the Daytona 500 on the last lap).
“Great job out of this team,” Hamlin told FS1’s Jamie Little after a season-best second and his first top five at Phoenix in the Next Gen. “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. 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 because 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. (Kyle Larson) really gave me a great push on the frontstretch on the restart, down the backstretch. I had kind of position on (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.”
Josh Berry rebounded for fourth after falling to 32nd because of a loose lug nut on Lap 94. It’s the first top five at Phoenix for Wood Brothers Racing’s No. 21 Ford.
Chris Buescher took fifth, the first top five of the 2025 season for Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing.
There were three caution flags in the final 50 laps, and a final round of pit stops under yellow with 40 to go was decisive. Bell gained six spots, Hamlin picked up nine, and Larson gained 11, which set up the final duel.
Larson had a chance to lay the bumper of his No. 5 Chevrolet to Bell and Hamlin in the final two laps but elected to refrain.
“I felt like that was my only hope,” Larson told FS1 after tying his season-best finish. “Yeah, I felt like I made the correct decisions there. 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. Pit crew did a great job there that last stop. They made good adjustments compared to our first option tire (in) round two. Yeah, got better but need to be a lot, lot better to have any shot to win here in the fall when it really matters. Great to get a solid finish in here. It’s been kind of a struggle for us here to start the year. Happy about that. Go to Vegas and try to do good again.”
NASCAR will return to Phoenix Raceway for the Oct. 31-Nov. 2 championship race weekend for the Cup, Xfinity and truck series.
Sunday’s race marked the Phoenix debut for prime and option tires, which added another layer of strategy as teams alternated between two compounds with varying degrees of durability and speed.
Four-time IMSA winner and Indy 500 veteran Katherine Legge, the first woman to start a Cup race in more than seven years, finished 30th in her NASCAR Cup debut with Live Fast Motorsports.
Stage 1 winner: William Byron
Stage 2 winner: Christohper Bell
Next: Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Sunday, March 16, 3:30 p.m. ET, FS1
