Shriners Children’s 500: Christopher Bell wins at Phoenix, earns third consecutive Cup Series win

AVONDALE, Ariz. — Christopher Bell made history in the Shriners Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway, becoming the first driver in the Next Gen era to win three consecutive races in the NASCAR Cup Series.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver has been one of the best drivers in the sport over the past couple of seasons and with his third win in four races to start the 2025 season, all the momentum is sticking with him and the No. 20 team.

“How about that one, race fans?” Bell said to the crowd. “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?”

Bell’s JGR teammate Denny Hamlin was looking for his first win since last April at Dover as the two battled hard during the final laps. Unfortunately for the driver of the No. 11 Sport Clips Haircuts Toyota, Hamlin’s winless streak continues.

However, the No. 11 team can build on Hamlin’s first top-five finish of the 2025 season.

“Yeah, great job out of this Sport Clips team,” Hamlin said. “Got better and better as it went. Pit crew did a phenomenal job to keep us in the game when we had a bad stop in the middle. They made up for it at the end. First time we were able to get some clean air all day. Obviously our car was really fast. Really kind of wanted it to stay green there ’cause I thought in the long runs is really where we were going to be able to excel, especially on these tires.

“But we got a good restart. The 5 (Larson) really gave me a great push on the frontstretch on the restart, down the backstretch. I had kind of position on the 20 (Bell). I knew he was going to ship it in there. He had to use me. He could. Obviously we just kind of ran out of race track there. Great finish. Great job by the whole Joe Gibbs team to give us some fast cars.”

Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson seemed to be the only challenger for Bell and Hamlin during the final 35 laps of the fourth Cup Series race this year. Larson, who has not won at Phoenix since the 2021 Championship Race, had to settle for third place in the desert this time around.

“I felt like I did an OK job to give myself the best opportunity,” Larson said. “I was hoping to help Denny (Hamlin) down the back and then they would get racing, like they did, and then maybe they would make a bigger mistake in front of us and we could sneak by. It almost happened, but we just came up a little bit short. We still have a lot of work to do. William (Byron) seemed decent, but the rest of us (Hendrick Motorsports drivers) weren’t very good. We just have to keep working and try to make things a little bit easier.”

Results from the 2025 Shriners Children’s 500 at Phoenix are listed below:

Other Race Facts

The Shriners Children’s 500 marked the first race this year that had two different types of tire compounds (primary and option). Each tire led to different strategies that mixed up the race in various ways. For example, Ryan Preece put on option tires from 33rd and made his way up to third to end Stage 1.

Katherine Legge made her NASCAR Cup Series debut, becoming the first woman driver to compete at NASCAR’s highest level since Danica Patrick made her final career start in the 2018 Daytona 500.

Unfortunately for Legge, her race was cut short when she made contact with Josh Berry on the exit of Turn 2, sending the No. 78 Droplight Chevrolet spinning around into the path of Daniel Suárez. This resulted in a DNF and 30th-place finish for the 44-year-old Live Fast Motorsports driver from the United Kingdom.

In the first race since NASCAR countersued 23XI Racing, the team had a day they would like to forget. Riley Herbst was involved in an accident and ended up 37th. Bubba Wallace had a brake failure and finished 29th. Then, Tyler Reddick finished 20th, thanks to power steering issues.

Hendrick Motorsports had all four cars inside the top 10. Kyle Larson was third, followed by William Byron (sixth), Alex Bowman (seventh) and Chase Elliott (10th).

Michael McDowell collected the bonus point for setting the Xfinity Fastest Lap of the race.

A “Big One” happened and took out many cars, including some contenders:

Additional race facts provided by Trey Ryan and NASCAR Insights:

• Joey Logano became the first defending Cup Series champion failing to earn a top-10 finish in the first four races of the following season.
• Josh Berry started and finished fourth at Phoenix, which is the first time Wood Brothers Racing has started and finished a race in the top five since Matt DiBenedetto at Kansas in May 2021. Also, this marks the team’s first-ever top five at Phoenix.
• 26 cars were left running at the finish of the race, the fewest ever in a Cup race Series at Phoenix. In turn, it also means the 11 DNFs are the most ever during a Phoenix premier series race.
• Christopher Bell had the first last-lap pass at Phoenix in Cup Series history (58 races). Additionally, for the first time in Cup Series history, three of the first four races of the season have been decided by a last-lap pass.

GRID RANKING

 

For now, Atlanta, COTA and Phoenix race winner Christopher Bell will lead the Cup Series rating, followed by William Byron, Tyler Reddick, Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin.

The next race on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, March 16. Coverage will begin at 3:30 p.m. ET on FS1.

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