Bell earns third straight NASCAR Cup win, beating Hamlin by just 0.049s

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Christopher Bell was just a few laps away from a fairly calm victory at Phoenix Raceway when the caution flag flew for his teammate Ty Gibbs, who suffered a brake failure. This set-up a two-lap dash to the checkered flag where Bell had to fend off another Joe Gibbs Racing teammate in Denny Hamlin in a dramatic finish.

In ARCA, Brenden ‘Butterbean’ Queen and Brent Crews battled side-by-side into the final corner for the win on Friday night. In the Xfinity race on Saturday, Aric Almirola and Alex Bowman did the same. Well, Sunday was no different as Bell entered the final corner to the inside of Hamlin, using up a lot of track as they grasped at the lead.

Exiting Turn 4, Kyle Larson nearly got under both of them and even touched the rear bumper of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, but Bell managed to just barely hang on. Hamlin was 0.049s back at the line in the second-closest finish in the history of Cup at Phoenix while Larson was only 0.097s adrift of the win in third.

Christopher Bell, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

Photo by: Jonathan Bachman – Getty Images

Bell makes some history

“How about that one, race fans?” Bell told FOX Sports 1. “Oh, my gosh, man. Whenever you’re sitting there dreaming it up, that’s about as ugly as it gets. You put the red 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?”

Watch: Bell energetic after Phoenix win gives him three in a row

Bell is the first driver of the Next Gen era (and first since Larson in 2021) to win three consecutive Cup races. After getting crashed from the front row during the Daytona 500, he came back with a vengeance, taking dramatic victories at Atlanta, COTA and now Phoenix. He now has 12 career victories, already matching his own record for most wins in a single season after just four races this year.

Behind the leading trio at the checkered flag, the Fords of Josh Berry and Chris Buescher rounded out the top-five. The rest of the top-ten was as follows: William Byron, Bowman, Kyle Busch, Zane Smith, and Chase Elliott. The race was slowed by ten cautions, including a massive multi-car pileup on Lap 99 which forced seven cars to fall out of the race.