Christopher Bell went into NASCAR’s history books after securing his third Cup Series win in a row by narrowly outperforming Denny Hamlin at the Shriners Children’s 500. The winner wasn’t decided until the last second, making it the second-closest finish in Phoenix Raceway’s history.
Bell is now the 19th driver in the sport’s history to secure three wins in a row. The race offered fans enough excitement to cherish, featuring ten caution flags. Not to forget his intense and close battle with Hamlin that made it difficult to predict the winner.
Looking at Bell’s impressive performance, Hamlin offered his view to FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass on X, after the race at Phoenix. He said:
“It’s so hard for me to kind of analyze it from the outside, because I’m not embedded with their team as much as I am with my own team, right?
“I mean obviously you see a gain in performance there, but you don’t; it could be a lot of different things. Car’s better, is it circumstances in a speedway race or road course race? Or this one, I guess he probably dominated, right?”
“I don’t know, circumstance or not three in a row is pretty impressive and whatever they’re doing is just working well.”
Hamlin and Bell were also joined by Kyle Larson in the thrilling battle, who finished third. Speaking on the intense last leg of the Phoenix race, Hamlin said:
“It was the first time we were able to get some clean air all day, and obviously our car was really fast. I really kind of wanted it to stay green there, because I thought in the long run was really where we were going to be able to excel, especially on these tires.
“But we got a good restart. The 5 really gave me a great push on the front stretch on the restart, and then down the back stretch. So I had kind of position on the 20 but I knew he was going to ship it in there, and if he had to use me he could. Obviously we just kind of ran out of racetrack there, but great finish and great job by the whole Joe Gibbs team to give us some fast cars.”
Despite missing out on the race win at Phoenix, the race was Hamlin’s best of the season so far. Apart from the points he secured from his second-place finish, he also scored points for finishing eighth in Stage 1 and sixth in Stage 2.
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