Practice #1 : Phoenix Raceway

• Thursday, March 6th, 2025
• NASCAR Wire Service - Holly Cain

Can anyone catch Christopher Bell’s fast start?

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell undoubtedly starts the NASCAR Cup Series two-race Western Swing as the driver to beat. The 30-year-old is the defending winner of Sunday’s Shriners Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway (3:30 p.m. ET on FS1, FOX Deportes, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and has won two of the first three series races this year, including the last two.

A victory Saturday would make Bell the first driver to win three consecutive races in the Next Gen car era. His dominance extends beyond 2025—he leads all drivers with 10 top-five and 12 top-10 finishes in the last 15 races dating back to August. No other driver has more than seven top-fives in that span.

“I don’t really have a message to send to any of them, but it’s nice to be able to capitalize on race wins,” Bell said after winning last week in Austin, Texas. “Last year, there were so many race wins that got away whenever I had the fastest car. The last two weeks at Atlanta and here, I kind of won without the fastest car, so it’s really nice to get those back that I lost last year.

“I’m excited about what’s to come. We have high expectations, high hopes, and goals for this year. Frankly, the last couple of years being at Joe Gibbs Racing in this No. 20 car, I haven’t been living up to the standards that I hold for myself. Our goal going into 2025 is to do that, or my goal is to do that for myself. I know Adam Stevens feels the same way. He believes we’re capable of a lot of great things. We haven’t done that yet in the NASCAR Cup Series season. Maybe 2025 will be the year.”

There is no doubt that Bell’s JGR teammates are hoping his early season success becomes contagious. Three-time DAYTONA 500 winner and perennial championship contender Denny Hamlin sits 17th in points. The driver of the No. 11 Toyota started this race from the pole last year and has a pair of wins in the desert (2012, 2019).

Chase Briscoe, who earned the DAYTONA 500 pole in his first start for JGR, is ranked 15th after the No. 19 team won a penalty appeal from NASCAR this week. Ty Gibbs, who won the 2023 NASCAR Xfinity Series championship at Phoenix, is 36th in the standings and is still searching for his first top-10 of the season.

Despite Bell’s strong start, DAYTONA 500 winner William Byron leads the Cup Series standings entering Phoenix, holding a two-point lead over Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney, who won the series championship at Phoenix two years ago. Last year’s regular-season champion, 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick, is third in the standings, five points behind Byron. Bell and Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott are both 21 points back.

Eight different drivers have earned top-10 finishes in two of the first three races, but no one has placed in the top 10 in all three. Byron, Reddick, and Bell are the only drivers with two top-five finishes.

While the season has already produced a repeat winner, competition has been intense, with a series-record 125 lead changes in the first three races.

Two-time series champion Kyle Busch has emerged as a frontrunner after a difficult 2024 season. He led late in last week’s road course race and has two top-10 finishes this year. His 55 laps led in the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet rank fourth this season, a positive sign after missing the playoffs and failing to win a race for the first time in 20 years.

Busch leads all active drivers in laps led at Phoenix (1,190) and pole positions (four) at the one-mile desert track.

“I would like to think we’re ahead of the game there,” Busch said. “We’re in a better spot or in a better position. We had some good hires over the offseason—some good engineers and some good people from other teams—to kind of up our performance. Anytime you do that and you chase good people, that’s what you’re going for, right? You’re going for the performance that they can bring to the table. So fresh ideas, different things, and whatnot.

“They’re not going to outwork us, that’s for sure,” Busch added. “But I think the next test is definitely going to be the next two weeks—going to Phoenix, the short track, a place where we have struggled lately—to see how we can turn that program around.”

Team Penske’s Joey Logano leads all drivers with 126 laps led this season but has yet to post a top-10 finish. His teammate Austin Cindric has led 106 laps but has just one top-10 result. Wood Brothers Racing’s Josh Berry has led 56 laps but is still searching for a top-10 finish.

Beyond Bell’s quest for history, British driver Katherine Legge will make her NASCAR Cup Series start, becoming just the eighth woman to start a race in the modern era (since 1972) and the first since Danica Patrick in the 2018 DAYTONA 500.

Legge will drive the No. 78 Live Fast Motorsports Chevrolet, replacing regular driver BJ McLeod for the weekend. The 44-year-old has prior stock car experience, most recently competing in the ARCA season opener at Daytona, where she finished 39th after an early accident. She also has five NASCAR Xfinity Series starts, dating back to her 2018 debut at Mid-Ohio.

A veteran of open-wheel and sports car racing, Legge has raced two full IndyCar seasons (2006-07) and made four Indianapolis 500 starts, with a best finish of 22nd in 2012. She has more than 100 IMSA starts, earning four class wins and 18 podiums from 2007-2024. She made her Chili Bowl Nationals debut this year and is the first female driver inducted into the Long Beach Motorsports Hall of Fame.

Patrick was the last female driver to race at Phoenix, making 11 Cup Series starts at the track, with a best finish of 16th in 2015.

• Phoenix Raceway
• Shriners Children's 500
• Busch Pole Award Pole Winner: William Byron
• Age: 27
• Team : No 24 - Z by HP Chevrolet
• Owner: Rick Hendrick
• Crew Chief: Rudy Fugle
• William Byron won the Pole Award for the Shriners Children's 500 with a lap of 2693 seconds, 133680 mph
• This is his 14th pole in 256 NASCAR Cup Series races
• This is his first pole and second top-10 start in 2025
• This is his second pole in 15 races at Phoenix Raceway
• Joey Logano (second) posted his third top-10 start of 2025 and his 22nd in 33 races at Phoenix Raceway
• Carson Hocevar (third) posted his second top-10 start at Phoenix Raceway It is his second in four races this season
• Riley Herbst (18th) was the fastest qualifying rookie

• Sunday, March 9th, 2025
• NASCAR Wire Service - Holly Cain

Bell triumphs in Phoenix with dramatic win over teammate Hamlin

Christopher Bell prevailed in a dramatic side-by-side finish with his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin — the second-closest finish in Phoenix Raceway history — to earn Bell his third consecutive NASCAR Cup Series victory this season, a record in the sport’s Next Gen Car era.

Bell’s No. 20 JGR Toyota went high alongside Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota as the two cars dueled it out in the final two corners of a two-lap shootout on the one-mile speedway. The 30-year-old Oklahoman claimed the historic win by a mere .049 seconds, marking his second straight victory in this spring race at Phoenix.

“How about that one, race fans? Oh my gosh!” a jubilant Bell shouted to the Phoenix crowd after collecting the winner’s checkered flag at the start-finish line.

“Whenever you’re sitting there dreaming it up, that’s about as ugly as it gets. You put the red [option] tires on, and 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 hard coming to the line. JGR ran 1-2 — how about that?”

Hamlin’s runner-up finish was disappointing in the moment but still his best of the early season in the No. 11 JGR Toyota, earning the team its first 1-2 finish of 2025. He led the white-flag lap but couldn’t fend off Bell, who drove the fastest car of the day, leading a race-high 103 of the 312 laps.

“Great job by the Sport Clips team, it got better as it went,” Hamlin said. “Pit crew did a phenomenal job keeping us in the game. We had a bad stop in the middle but made up for it in the end.

“[The end] was the first time we were able to 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’d excel, especially on these tires. We got a good restart – the five [Kyle Larson] really gave me a good push on the frontstretch and down the backstretch. I had position on the 20, but I knew he was going to send it in there if he could. We just ran out of racetrack. But great finish.”

Team owner Joe Gibbs joked afterward that having his two drivers battle for the win and finish 1-2 was a huge positive, but it had him on pins and needles during the closing laps Sunday.

“It can be a tense Monday meeting if it doesn’t work out,” he said with a laugh.

Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson claimed third place, with Wood Brothers Racing’s Josh Berry and Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing’s Chris Buescher rounding out the top five. It was the best finish of the year for Berry and came on a busy afternoon where teams had to strategize using two kinds of tires — option (red) or primary (yellow) — for only the second time in Next Gen points-racing competition.

Goodyear allotted each team two sets of the option tires and six of the primary, with the idea that the red option tires were quicker but presented a challenge due to their quicker wear. The initial response to the extra element in the race was positive.

“Everything went according to plan at Phoenix, and the option tire worked very well,” Goodyear’s NASCAR project manager Mark Keto said after the race. “It gave teams a chance to vary their strategies and maximize their effectiveness to gain track position over teams that were on the primary tires.

“Teams were also able to manage their options once they got track position and make them last longer into a run. Overall, we were very happy with the balance and strategy of the prime/option tire setup and how it added to the racing all day.”

The tire option played into the race, with RFK Racing’s Ryan Preece, for example, switching early to the red tires and ultimately advancing more than 25 positions on track to lead 34 laps. Winning crew chief Adam Stevens said after the race that a lot was learned about the tires and hoped the series would be open to using them again. NASCAR will hold a closed tire test Monday at Phoenix.

Hendrick teammates William Byron and Alex Bowman finished sixth and seventh, followed by Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch, Front Row Motorsports’ Zane Smith, and Hendrick’s Chase Elliott, rounding out the top 10. It was the third consecutive top 10 for two-time series champion Busch and a season-best finish for Smith.

“It was just crazy there at the end,” Byron said of the race strategy. “We restarted 21st and got into the top 10 pretty quickly. I feel like we probably used up a lot of tire on the reds to get those last few spots, so it was hard to get much more.

“I’m happy with it. The No. 24 Chevrolet team put together a good weekend. We learned a lot and got a solid finish, so that’s something to be proud of.”

Katherine Legge, a sports car race winner and former Indianapolis 500 starter, finished 30th on the 37-car grid in her NASCAR Cup Series debut, driving the No. 78 Live Fast Motorsports Chevrolet. The British driver became only the eighth woman in NASCAR’s modern era (1972-present) to compete in the sport’s highest level, and the first since Danica Patrick raced in the 2018 DAYTONA 500.

One-mile tracks like Phoenix are not typically known for big multi-car accidents, but the “big one” in the desert occurred early in Sunday’s race. Spire Motorsports’ teammates Justin Haley and Carson Hocevar, along with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Chase Briscoe, made heavy contact racing four-wide out of Turn 2, ultimately collecting and eliminating five other cars from the race.

Despite the early end to his chances, Haley was impressed with the softer option tires.

“I wish I would have been on the option tires the whole time and everyone else on the primaries,” Haley said. “They just make you feel like Superman. I like the tire. I honestly feel like we should go to them everywhere. They make the cars drive a lot better. I don’t know if that’s what you want, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.”

Bell now heads to the 1.5-mile Las Vegas high banks next week, hoping to match a milestone set by NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, who is the only driver to win four of a season’s first five races, doing so in 1992.

• Drivers Entered: 37
• Laps Scheduled: 312
• Margin of Victory: 0.049 Seconds
• Time of Race: 3 Hours 23 Minutes 10 Seconds
• Average Speed: 92.141
• Cautions: 10 for 73 laps
• Lead Changes: 17
• Green Flag Passes: 2,294 (9.6 passes per green flag lap)

• Phoenix Raceway
• Shriners Children's 500
• Race Winner: Christopher Bell
• Age: 30
• Team : No 20 - Reser's Fine Foods Toyota
• Owner: Joe Gibbs
• Crew Chief: Adam Stevens
• Christopher Bell won the Shriners Children's 500, his 12th victory in 184 Cup Series races
• This is his third victory and third top-10 finish in 2025
• This is his second victory and seventh top-10 finish in 11 races at Phoenix Raceway
• Denny Hamlin (second) posted his 23rd top-10 finish in 40 races at Phoenix Raceway It is his second top-10 finish in 2025
• Kyle Larson (third) posted his 14th top-10 finish in 22 races at Phoenix Raceway
• Shane Van Gisbergen (31st) was the highest finishing rookie
• William Byron leads the point standings by 13 points over Christopher Bell
• Bell is the first driver to win three straight races in the Next Gen car; last driver to win three straight was Kyle Larson in 2021
• Bell is the second Joe Gibbs Racing driver to win at least three straight races (Kyle Busch in 2015)
• Bell is the fourth driver to win three times through four races (Kevin Harvick in 2018, Bill Elliott in 1992, Herb Thomas in 1954)
• Three of the four Cup Series races of 2025 have ended with a last lap pass, Bell has won two of the three