AVONDALE, Ariz. — Christopher Bell made history in several ways Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, but the glory of a third straight NASCAR Cup Series victory provided a sense of achievement that he and his Joe Gibbs Racing team had finally reached the top of the mountain.
Bell held off teammate Denny Hamlin by a mere .049 seconds to win his third straight Cup Series race and the 12th of his career.
“Three straight, it’s surreal,” Bell said Sunday night. “I will never forget 2021, my first year with Adam Stevens. Kyle Larson won three straight. Me and Adam got off to a rocky patch, rocky start. We’re sitting in his office there at JGR. He looked at me and he said, ‘We can do this.’ He said, ‘I’ve won three straight sitting in these exact same two chairs,’ talking about him and Kyle Busch. ‘I know we can do it.’
“Took a while to get here, but we finally did it. I am just so proud,” Bell added. “I’m so proud of all of the mechanics, the engineers, Adam, the pit crew members. Everybody on this 20 car…
What you’re seeing is everybody pulling the rope in the same direction, everybody doing their job to the best of their abilities. This is what I knew would come out of this team.
Like I say, it came from Adam. I didn’t know what was capable of this team. Adam knew what was capable of this team. We’re finally starting to see the fruit of it.”
Bell knows the next challenge is to remain at the top of the mountain.
“I’ve never been on this side of it before,” he acknowledged. “I can promise you this. Everybody is grinning ear to ear and just trying to ride the wave. I’ve raced long enough, not in the Cup Series, but throughout my life, that I know it comes in waves. There’s times where it feels like you can’t do anything right. There’s times where you feel like you can’t do anything wrong. We’re on that side of it now.”
Bell is optimistic heading into next weekend’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“I’m just going to keep living, keep living, riding it out as long as we can,” he said. “We have a great opportunity next week going to Las Vegas. This part of the schedule lines up really good for me.
“It started off scary with Daytona, Atlanta back to back. We survived. Well, we didn’t technically survive Daytona, but we survived Atlanta. Now we’re getting into the bread and butter of what we are good at. I’m glad that we could execute and have a nice, solid day here at Phoenix.”
Bell has won his three straight races on three different types of tracks, the one-mile Phoenix Raceway, the road course at Circuit of The Americas and the superspeedway at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
“It’s really cool. Really cool. Something that myself as a driver, I’ve worked really hard on to become good at all of the styles of tracks in the Cup Series,” Bell said. “I think that’s what it takes to be the best.
“Ever since I was growing up, I tried to just run everything and be strong at everything, whether it was dirt cars, asphalt cars, wing cars, non-wing cars. I’ve always believed that the best race car drivers can win at everything.
“It means the world to me that my team has gotten to be successful everywhere. Yeah, we got an intermediate next. So maybe. I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes.”
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