Bell gets its third consecutive win

Christopher Bell secured his third consecutive victory of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, a record in the Next Gen car era, after beating his teammate Denny Hamlin at Phoenix Raceway.

A battle to the finish line

The 30-year-old Oklahoma driver edged Hamlin by just 0.049 seconds, the second closest finish in the history of the one-mile circuit in Arizona. Bell, driving the #20 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, advanced on the outside in the final two corners during a two-lap restart to claim his second consecutive victory in this spring race.

"What did you think of that, fans? Oh my God!", exclaimed Bell as he collected the checkered flag at the finish line.

Bell, who led a total of 103 of the 312 laps, commented on the finish: "When you're dreaming of a win, this is as tough as it gets. You put on the [option] red tires and think, 'what I don't want is to go 20 or 30 laps and then get a yellow flag.' That happened. Then we went 10 more laps and got another yellow."

"It was all about who could clear off at the restart. Neither of us could. We were racing really hard to the line. JGR finished 1-2, how about that?", added the winner.

Hamlin close to victory

For Hamlin, second place was his best result of this early part of the season with the #11 Toyota. The experienced driver led the white flag lap but could not hold off Bell's final charge.

"Great job by the Sport Clips team, the car got better as the race went on," Hamlin commented. "The pit crew did a phenomenal job keeping us in the fight. We had a bad stop mid-race but they made up for it at the end."

On the finish, he explained: "It was the first time we could get some clean air all day, and our car was really fast. I really wanted it to stay green because I thought that's where we would do best, especially with these tires. We had a good restart - the five [Kyle Larson] really gave me a good push on the front stretch and the backstretch. I had position on the 20, but I knew he was going to go all in if he could. We just ran out of track. But a great finish."

Top 5 and tire options

Kyle Larson of Hendrick Motorsports completed the podium, while Josh Berry of Wood Brothers Racing and Chris Buescher of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing finished fourth and fifth respectively. For Berry, this result was his best finish of the year.

The race included the second implementation of two types of tires — optional (red) or primary (yellow) — in points competition with the Next Gen car. Goodyear allocated each team two sets of optional tires and six of the primary ones, with the idea that the optional reds would be faster but wear out more quickly.

Katherine Legge makes history

Katherine Legge finished 30th among 37 participants in her first NASCAR Cup Series appearance, driving the #78 Chevrolet for Live Fast Motorsports. The British driver became the eighth woman in NASCAR's modern era (1972-present) to compete in the top category, and the first since Danica Patrick raced in the DAYTONA 500 in 2018.

Early multi-car incident

Despite the fact that one-mile tracks like Phoenix are not usually known for major multi-car wrecks, the "big one" in the desert happened early in Sunday's race. Spire Motorsports teammates Justin Haley and Carson Hocevar, along with Chase Briscoe of Joe Gibbs Racing, made heavy contact running four-wide coming out of turn 2, involving and eliminating five other cars from the race.

Bell looks to Las Vegas

Bell now heads to Las Vegas next week, seeking to match a mark set by NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, who is the only driver to win four of the first five races of a season, achieving it in 1992.

Meanwhile, William Byron leads the championship standings by 13 points over Bell as the NASCAR Cup Series returns to action on Sunday at the Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Larson is the defending winner of this race.