A Wild West Race Ends In Triumph For Bell

Christopher Bell took his third straight victory in the season’s first four races after a thrilling two-lap tango with teammate Denny Hamlin. Let’s see how Bell got to victory lane.

Race Recap

William Byron and Joey Logano led the field to green on Sunday afternoon, but the race was soon brought under caution by a Katherine Legge spin on lap 5.

On the ensuing restart, the yellow flag returned for an incident that started when Noah Gragson bumped Cole Custer in turn 2 and ended with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. spinning on the backstretch.

Lap 15 represented the real start of the race for most in the field as the race ran green to the end of the first stage, but one driver was awarded a false start: Joey Logano. The defending series champion controlled the restart and crossed the yellow line before the finish line, leading to a devastating pass-through penalty.

From there, all eyes were on RFK Racing’s Ryan Preece. While William Byron led the rest of the way to the end of the stage, Preece’s team elected to fit his #60 Solomon Plumbing Ford Mustang Dark Horse with the softer red option tires after the second caution, allowing him to fly through the field to finish third in stage 1.

A number of drivers followed Preece’s lead to start the second stage, among them were Austin Cindric and Michael McDowell. Cindric zoomed through the top-15 in his No. 2 Monster Mustang to take the lead from Byron just 17 laps after the restart.

While Cindric’s day looked to be getting easier, Michael McDowell’s came apart in a big way on lap 92 when his #71 Workforce Chevy lost a right-rear tire and slapped the turn 3 wall to bring out the fourth caution.

As the old saying goes, “Cautions breed cautions.”

On the lap 99 restart, a crash developed in the midfield as Ty Gibbs’ ill-fated four-wide maneuver squeezed Justin Haley into Chase Briscoe, triggering a multi-car collision that ended the days of Riley Herbst, Haley, Briscoe, Carson Hocevar, Cole Custer, Brad Keselowski, and Shane van Gisbergen.

A lengthy cleanup pushed the restart back to lap 113 where Christopher Bell asserted himself as the strongest car in the state of Arizona, powering to the point and pulling away from the pack.

That is until Joey Logano blew by with a fresh set of option tires. Logano stretched his gap to three seconds over Bell, but as those option tires eroded on the No. 22 Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford, Bell’s Reser’s Fine Foods Toyota surged ahead with a few laps remaining to take the stage 2 victory.

A whooping 19 cars in the top-20 took option tires to start the final stage. Logano put on his last set of red tires, and the move benefitted him for 20 laps or so when Katherine Legge — a driver suffering from spotter communication issues — clipped the left-rear of Josh Berry and spun her No. 78 DROPLiGHT Chevy right into the path of sixth-place runner Daniel Suárez, bringing out the race’s seventh yellow.

Pit lane was full of split decisions as some competitors toward the end of the lead lap pitted for red tires, including Ryan Preece who managed to climb up to the lead on lap 236.

Preece’s strategy came undone with 47 laps to go when Bubba Wallace lost a right-front brake rotor on the entry to turn 1, a hard hit into the outside wall put him out of the race and brought out the yellow once again.

Most lead-lap cars affixed their last option set on this pit stop with Bell taking the lead out of the pits and holding onto it after the next restart.

After reporting earlier in the final stage that his car had power issues, Ryan Blaney’s Würth Ford saw its engine expire in turn 3 on lap 290, bringing some drivers down pit road under the ensuing caution period.

With just eight laps to go, Ty Gibbs suffered a brake failure similar to Bubba Wallace before him, slamming his #54 Monster Camry into the turn 3 wall to bring out the race’s 10th yellow.

For the final restart, Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin took the green flag with two laps to go, and after a bunch of physical racing from both JGR drivers over the final couple of miles, Christopher Bell won his third straight race and his second-straight spring race at Phoenix Raceway.

Hamlin came home second to give team owner Joe Gibbs a 1-2 finish with Kyle Larson, Josh Berry, and Chris Buescher rounding out the top-5. Here’s the official results.

Race Review

This race had everything.

Tire strategy, comers and goers, a major pileup, and a truly amazing run to the finish.

There was something in this race for every kind of race fan, and my hope is that this race proved to many of its detractors that Phoenix Raceway can put on a great race.

Christopher Bell put on a show for the fans for the third consecutive week and looks to be hoarding stage points better than anyone else, ramping his total up to a gaudy 16 Playoff points after race 4/36.

While it was personally devastating to see my writer’s pick fall out of the race with a rare engine failure, it didn’t take my eyes off of this race for a second as there was always a battle somewhere around the race track.

At the end of the day, this race hit a lot of major points for me, and I’m glad Phoenix finally put on a banger.

(Top Photo Credit: Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)