Bell takes thrilling hat-trick as Van Gisbergen crashes out
Christopher Bell has taken his NASCAR Cup Series dominance to further heights as he took a thrilling third win in a row at Phoenix where Shane van Gisbergen got caught in a multi-car crash.
Despite dominating the majority of the Shriners Children’s 500, Bell found himself in a tense door-to-door duel with Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin.
After a late caution the #20 and #11 ran side by side for the final two laps to produce a stunning run to the line.
It all came down to the final corner where Bell edged ahead of Hamlin by 0.049s with Kyle Larson in tow in what was the second closest finish ever at Phoenix.
As a result Bell is the first driver to win three in a row in the current seventh generation Cup car that arrived in 2022.
Van Gisbergen was running 19th on Lap 99 during the second stage before he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In the intense battle for position following a restart, the decision to run four wide deep in the pack proved to be too risky.
Chase Briscoe collided with Justin Haley coming out of Turn 2, sending the #19 airborne briefly as ricocheted off each other and scattered all over the back straight with Riley Herbst spinning into van Gisbergen.
Brad Keselowski, Cole Custer, Todd Gilliland, Noah Gragson, AJ Allmendinger and Austin Dillon were all involved.
It was a tough blow for SVG, who had risen from 29th on the grid.
“They were racing four-wide. I hoped over a wheel and there wasn’t much I could do,” van Gisbergen said.
“I tried to pull it up and got a bit loose.
“We were getting better and better as the race went on.
“I felt like the No. 88 WeatherTech Chevy was getting better, too. It’s a shame we’re still not out there learning.”
“That’s about the biggest you can crash at Phoenix,” Briscoe said upon exiting the infield care center. “Yeah, it was a big one. On that restart, we were three, four-wide and I just climbed over the No. 7 (Justin Haley)’s right front. Unfortunate.”
Will Byron led away from pole and dominated the opening stage, while Turn 2 was a troublesome spot with a loose Gragson also sending Ricky Stenhouse Jr into a spin.
During the second stage Bell had assumed complete control of the race and comfortably won the second stage.
The #20 retained track position in the final leg being fast in clean air despite Hamlin making good progress.
Turn 2 soon struck again with Katherine Legge rotating and leaving Daniel Suarez with nowhere to go.
The field settled down with a long green flag run where Bell again proved to be the man to beat.
However, his cruise was disrupted by Ryan Blaney, who brought out a caution with 15 to go a blown engine.
Whilst the top 15 stated out, the likes of Logano, Cindric and Chastain boxed for fresh tyres and tried to make late gains into the top 10.
At the restart with 17 to go Bell fended off Hamlin, who soon had to stop Larson from breaking the JGR 1-2.
Bell was in complete control again with eight to go, only for his JGR teammate Ty Gibbs to find the wall and bring out an untimely yellow.
A broken rotor appeared to blow the tyre and send him into the outside wall at Turn 3.
This set up a two-lap dash to the end and it was tight with Hamlin and Bell running door to door all the way.
It went down the final turn where Bell kept the foot down and held off his teammate and Larson despite a little wobble to complete a hat-trick.
“How about that one race fans? That was as ugly as it gets
When you put the red tyres on you don’t it to go 20-30 laps and get a yellow and then we had another one
It was all about who could get clear on the restart and neither of us could and we were just racing really hard coming to the line.”
Next is the Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas on Monday, March 17.
Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images
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