For all the talk about alternate option tire strategies, the NASCAR Cup Series race at Phoenix Raceway came down to a straight-up race amongst the best cars from the entirety of the race, with one notable exception.
In the end, Christopher Bell fended-off Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson to win his third consecutive race and three out of four overall to start the 2025 season. Simply put, the most races that Bell has ever won in a single campaign is three and he has already matched that after a month and with 32 races still remaining.
Bell is the first to achieve the accomplishment since the seventh-generation car was unveiled at the start of the 2022 season. He is the first driver to have won three-consecutive races since Kyle Larson did it in 2021 in the final season of the sixth-generation car and the first to have won three of the first four since Kevin Harvick in 2018.
Why stop there — Bell has already accumulated 16 playoff points and is second in the championship and already seems on the cusp of a Final Four appearance based on historical precedence.
“I will never forget 2021, my first year with (crew chief) Adam Stevens,” Bell said. “Kyle Larson won three straight. Me and Adam got off to a rocky patch, rocky start. We’re sitting in his office there at Joe Gibbs Racing. 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.”
Stevens reiterated that he knew that he could reach the same performance level with Bell and here they are.
Still, this is a team that won three races in the first half last season that put up a goose egg over the final 19 — including the all-important playoff stretch.
“If you paid attention, if you’re in this sport, I think you saw a lot of speed out of the 20 team and the other JGR cars on occasion down the stretch,” Stevens said. “We just weren’t able to convert those into wins. Extremely frustrating. It weighs you down. The (Playoffs), we had so many opportunities and did everything we needed to do. It just didn’t go our way.”
Stevens said they have executed this spring but also caught some breaks along the way too. His driver echoed that sentiment.
“Well, we should have won a lot in those 19 (races) but we didn’t win any,” Bell said. “It was just bad fortune, some lack of execution. Really we had the performance in our team. It drove me nuts that everyone kept talking about that JGR hadn’t won since June, JGR hadn’t won since June. Oh my gosh, it was true.
“But the performance had been there. It was just getting everything to line up. Now we’re clicking. It was just really amazing to be alongside my JGR teammate racing for the win. That’s the way it should be.”
Hamlin, obviously, doesn’t believe it should have quite been that way based on what he said on his Actions Detrimental podcast earlier in the week. There, he said ‘it sucks’ to lose to a teammate more than anything else because they are in equal equipment.
So what is the difference right now?
“It’s so hard to say because I’m not as embedded with them as much as I am with my own team,” Hamlin said. “You see a gain in performance there but it could be a lot of different things — like is their car better, or circumstances in a speedway or road course race, or this one, he probably dominated.
“Circumstances or not, three in a row is pretty impressive and whatever they’re doing is working well.”
Now Bell turns his attention to winning four in a row, last accomplished by Jimmie Johnson in 2007, an achievement that would be virtually unheard of in this post-modern era.
He will try next Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway where he has three top-5s and two runner-ups over his last four starts.
“Man, that’s special,” Bell said. “That is incredibly special. To hear that and know that I have that opportunity ahead of me. We’re going to a darn good place for it.
“This sport has become so incredibly tough with the parity that we have. The teams are so tight. The cars are really tight. The drivers are tight. Like, everybody performs at a high level. There are 10, 15 guys that could win on any given week.
“It was really cool to see. I don’t even know how many teams we had lead the race, Ryan Preece was up there leading for the first time in a long time. The field is littered with talented drivers, teams, crew chiefs. It’s hard to do. I acknowledge that. I’m just kind of in disbelief that I have this opportunity but I’m looking forward to it.”
The finish
Hamlin hung in there with Bell on the final restart, a naturally occurring green-white-checkered, and stalled both of their momentum allowing Kyle Larson to draw up behind him.
Ultimately, Hamlin lost when Bell slid up the track and made the ever so slightest contact, which was the difference coming to the line. Hamlin wishes he had grabbed a gear.
“I need to go back and look, because I’m in a cocoon and I don’t know what the circumstances are,” Hamlin said. “I know that I got a really bad run out of 4 and I should have downshifted but, I don’t know, I wasn’t ready for that.”
Larson was hoping to shove Hamlin past Bell and into the marbles into the final corners.
“I felt like I did an okay job to give myself the best opportunity,” Larson said. “I was hoping to help Denny down the back and then they would get racing, like they did, and then maybe they would make a bigger mistake in front of us and we could sneak by. It almost happened, but we just came up a little bit short.
“We still have a lot of work to do. William (Byron) seemed decent, but the rest of us (Hendrick Motorsports drivers) weren’t very good. We just have to keep working and try to make things a little bit easier.”
The option tire
The major wrinkle of this race came in the form of a softer option tire.
There is two ways of looking at this option tire and what it was designed to do. On one hand, this tire was added to the primary tire because NASCAR and Goodyear wanted to put a much softer tire through a race environment to see how it would perform if it were the tire used in the Championship Race in November.
On the other hand, for this race in a vacuum, it also created numerous opportunities for strategic deviation and generated constant movement throughout the field. And ultimately, it didn’t even effect the outcome of the race as the timing of the cautions resulted in a straight-up race with everyone on equal footing.
The option tire arguably didn’t have enough fall off built into it, but some of that was also the way drivers drove on it, often trying their best to keep as much life into it for as long as possible. Ryan Preece drove up through the field on one set early and fell short of the first stage win and had an outside shot at winning the race on his second set if not for the caution with 46 to go for a Bubba Wallace brake rotor implosion.
Teams had so many options in the second half of the race from saving all of their option tires, reusing scuffed options, sticker primaries or staying out on whatever tires that had on after a moderate length run.
So there are a lot of different lenses in which to evaluate the tires upon.
Bell doesn’t like having races with two different compounds.
“I’m not a fan of having two tire compounds in the same race,” Bell said. “It worked out today where a couple of the best cars ended up racing for the win.
“A matter of luck becomes involved whenever you have a faster car and a slower tire. It worked out today for me. I personally don’t like having two tires in the same race or two compounds, I should say, in the same race with there being known yellows.”
He says it works in IndyCar because they never know when the caution will come out, unlike NASCAR, with its stage breaks.
“I talked to somebody in here about IndyCar, how they have multiple tire compounds, but they don’t have the stage breaks,” Bell said. “It makes it a little bit, I don’t know, just a little bit different.”
Josh Berry enjoyed the wrinkles the race provided.
“It just opens up the strategies, right,” Berry said. “Everyone has been hard on this track but we saw three amazing finishes this weekend. This goes to show you it isn’t always the track but you have to work on the combination to see what works.
“From my seat that seemed like a really good race. … There was a lot of strategy in that and it reminds me of short track racing. People might not want the championship to come down to who saved a set of tires for last, but at the end of the day, we all have the same opportunities of when to use them. It was about to work out for some of those guys today.”
Zane Smith had effusive praise for the racing on Sunday.
“Yeah, they are a lot of fun and it made it probably the most fun Phoenix race I feel like I have been to,” Smith said.
Paul Wolfe told Frontstretch.com that the option tire could be a good primary tire or run both.
“It finally gave up; it took 60 some laps for it to crossover there,” Wolfe said. “They wore out. Yeah, the two tire option might be a better race from an entertainment standpoint.”
How did Goodyear NASCAR Projects Manager Mark Keto feel?
“Everything went according to plan at Phoenix, and the Option tire worked very well,” Keto said. “It gave teams a chance to vary their strategies as to when to use them and maximize their effectiveness to gain track position over teams that were out on the Prime tires. Teams were also able to manage their Options once they got track position and make them live longer into a run. Overall we were very happy with the balance and strategy of the Prime/Option tire set-up, and how it added to the racing all day.”
The Biggest One
The race also featured the largest multi-car crash in the Cup Series history of the one-mile Avondale track.
Chase Briscoe collided with Justin Haley in the midst of a four-wide battle off a restart in Stage 2, sending the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 into the air while also collecting Carson Hocevar.
Brad Keselowski, Cole Custer, Riley Herbst, Todd Gilliland, Shane Van Gisbergen, Noah Gragson, AJ Allmendinger and Austin Dillon were also included.
“That’s about the biggest you can crash at Phoenix,” Briscoe said leaving infield care. “Yeah, it was a big one. On that restart, we were three, four-wide and I just climbed over (Justin Haley)’s right front. Unfortunate. We were able to go from the tail (of the field) up to 12th or 13th and felt good about our No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota. Got myself in a bad spot. Was probably trying to fade a little more left with (Carson Hocevar) on my right rear and yeah, just went over (Haley’s) right front. Unfortunate but try to learn from it and not do it again and go onto Vegas.”
Hocevar?
“Yeah, it’s frustrating,” added Hocevar, who started third. “Our car was fast. I felt like our Chevrolet was pretty good. We just got behind on pit stops, just playing the tire game. Shouldn’t have been back there … we had good track position, but the way that cycle worked out, we were just back there in the mess. Unfortunate, but our Spire cars are fast and I’m sure they’ll be fast again.”
Keselowski has now been collected in wrecks in three of the first four races this season.
Of note
Josh Berry gave Wood Brothers Racing its first Phoenix top-5 and the first top-5 start and finish on the same weekend since Matt DiBenedetto at Kansas in 2021.
“I hate that we had that mistake on pit road with the left rear that kind of knocked us back but we were able to fight back up there and had some really good restarts. I felt like myself again. It is amazing what you can do when the car is handling like that. It was really solid and staying underneath me. I am super proud of these guys.”
Joey Logano may very well have had the most comparable car to Bell but was stiffed with a lane violation penalty in the first half and then caught unlucky cautions when trying to work through the field on option tires late.
Katherine Legge struggled mightily in her Cup Series debut with BJ McLeod and was involved in two incidents, finishing 30th, involved in the big crash.
“It was a really rough start,” Legge said. “We made some changes to the car overnight and it was awful. The first stint, I was so loose, just hanging on to it. … At the end, I thought we were relatively quick. It wasn’t bad. I wish we hadnt made the changes but we were trying to find some pace. It was a rough start.”
Legge said there were a lot of positives, and mistakes made, but she learned a lot.
“Hopefully, I can come back soon.”
Results
- Christopher Bell
- Denny Hamlin
- Kyle Larson
- Josh Berry
- Chris Buescher
- William Byron
- Alex Bowman
- Kyle Busch
- Zane Smith
- Chase Elliott
- Ross Chastain
- Austin Dillon
- Joey Logano
- John Hunter Nemechek
- Ryan Preece
- Ty Dillon
- Todd Gilliland
- Erik Jones
- Austin Cindric
- Tyler Reddick
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- AJ Allmendinger
- Daniel Suarez
- Cody Ware
- Ty Gibbs
- Noah Gragson
- Michael McDowell
- Ryan Blaney
- Bubba Wallace
- Katherine Legge
- Shane Van Gisbergen
- Cole Custer
- Brad Keselowski
- Justin Haley
- Chase Briscoe
- Carson Hocevar
- Riley Herbst
Playoff standings
Christopher Bell WWW
William Byron W
Tyler Reddick +60
Ryan Blaney +53
Chase Elliott +41
Alex Bowman +34
Denny Hamlin +27
Kyle Busch +27
Joey Logano +27
Chris Buescher +26
Kyle Larson +25
Bubba Wallace +19
John Hunter Nemechek +16
Ricky Stenhouse +23
Michael McDowell +13
Ross Chastain +5
—
Todd Gilliland -5
Carson Hocevar -11
Erik Jones -13
Chase Briscoe -14
Josh Berry -15
Shane Van Gisbergen -19
Ty Dillon -19
Ryan Preece -20
Austin Dillon -22
Zane Smith -25
Riley Herbst -27
AJ Allmendinger -30
Daniel Suarez -33
Justin Haley -33
Noah Gragson -35
Austin Cindric -36
Brad Keselowski -41
Ty Gibbs -47
Cole Custer -52
