AVONDALE, Ariz. — Kyle Larson knows the feeling of winning three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series races.
Up until Sunday, he was the last to accomplish that feat, winning back-to-back-to-back Cup events during his 2021 Cup championship season.
One of Larson’s biggest rivals, Christopher Bell, earned his third race trophy in 15 days, as he followed victories at Atlanta and Circuit of the Americas with a triumph Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.
It marked the first time a driver has won three consecutive Cup races with the Next Gen car introduced in 2022 and the first time a driver has won three of the first four races since Kevin Harvick did it in 2018.
“It’s extremely tough to win two in a row, I feel like, in the Next Gen era, and for them to win three in a row is really impressive,” Larson said. “Their team is just strong. Their race cars are really fast. Bell is a phenomenal racecar driver, obviously.”
Bell’s triumph Sunday came after he led 105 of the 312 laps in what likely would have been somewhat of a runaway, if not for some late cautions. Bell had a side-by-side battle with Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin in the final two-lap dash to the finish, edging Hamlin by 0.049 seconds at the finish line.
“I thought I had lost the race coming to the white flag on the bottom with Denny on my outside. And then I once again felt like I had lost the race coming to the checkered flag down the back straightaway whenever Denny was on the outside,” Bell said.
“I don’t know how I won. I do know how I won. The [No.] 5 car [of Larson] gave me a great shove coming off the turn forward to push me to the line, and that was the difference maker.”
Hamlin has earned 54 Cup victories in his career. This marked Bell’s 12th, with his three consecutive wins coming at three very different tracks. Those came at a drafting track at Atlanta, a road course at COTA and a flat one-mile track at Phoenix. At Phoenix, there was the added twist of teams getting to choose between two different tire options during the race.
“Obviously, you see a gain in performance there, but you don’t know [why]. It could be a lot of different things,” said Hamlin, a JGR teammate of Bell’s about his three-race winning streak. “Is it our cars better? Is it circumstances in a speedway race or road-course race or like this one? I guess he probably dominated.
FINAL LAPS: Christopher Bell takes checkered flag at Shriners Children’s 500 to win third straight Cup Series race
“I don’t know. Circumstance or not, three in a row is pretty impressive and whatever they’re doing is just working.”
His team owner, Joe Gibbs, couldn’t explain how Bell could win three races after ending 2024 with a 19-race winless streak.
“I’ve got to tell you the truth,” said the famed football coach. “I don’t know that I have an answer for that.”
What he knows is what he sees in Bell and crew chief Adam Stevens, who won two Cup titles with Kyle Busch.
“We all kind of watch him, the talent he has,” Gibbs said about Bell. “I think it shows up. [These three wins] says a lot about the talent.
“Adam and Christopher are a real pair. Adam, obviously you can tell he has a gift being a crew chief.”
Bell has a simple explanation of why he went winless over the second half of 2024 to now winning three in a row in 2025.
“We should have won a lot, but we didn’t win any,” Bell said. “It was just bad fortune, some lack of execution. … The performance had been there. It was just getting everything to line up, and now we’re clicking.”
The question now is when will the streak end? The series heads to Las Vegas and Homestead the next two weeks. Those are two strong tracks for Bell.
“The more wins you get, the more confidence you get as well as your team gets,” Larson said. “He’s getting to go to Vegas, another track where he’s stupid fast and then Homestead maybe after that?
“I don’t know where we go after Homestead, but I’m sure he’s fast there as well. It’s good to get on a streak this early in the year. … It just sets your season up in a good spot.”
No driver has won four consecutive races since Jimmie Johnson in 2007.
“Everybody’s grinning ear to ear and just trying to ride the wave,” Bell said. “I’ve raced long enough throughout my life that I know it comes in waves. And there are times where it just feels like you can’t do anything right, and there are times where you feel like you can’t do anything wrong.
“I’m just going to keep living and riding it out as long as we can.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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