AVONDALE, Ariz. — Christopher Bell found himself in an unfamiliar place with 20 laps to go in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series showdown at Phoenix Raceway. His No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota had led for most of the day, but now, here he was — behind, and with three doubled-up rows of cars in front of him to pass.
The restart was coming in one more lap, and No. 20 crew chief Adam Stevens delivered words of inspiration over the team’s radio: “We have the best car. We’ve got the best driver here, bud. We need all take and no give. You can do it.”
The pep talk almost worked and so did a late pit-strategy play for Bell, who led a race-best 176 of 312 laps of the Straight Talk Wireless 500 but finished second in an otherwise dominant day in the desert. He gained significant ground on eventual race winner Ryan Blaney in the final green-flag stretch, but wound up 0.399 seconds — just a handful of car-lengths — shy of what would have been his third consecutive victory in Phoenix’s March event.
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Bell was leading when the next-to-last caution period prompted the final pit-stop cycle for all the front-running teams. Several contenders and gamblers opted for quicker service by changing right-side tires only, but the No. 20 crew took the time for four fresh Goodyears, placing him eighth for the next-to-last restart. The tire advantage nearly overcame the track-position disadvantage, with another rapid-fire yellow flag interrupting what could have been a winning final-stint charge.
“A few more laps, I probably would have got there,” Bell said on pit road post-race, “but I held him off on two tires so he wasn’t going to be an easy pass either way. So just … it’s a bummer. He made the call, Adam made the call for four tires, and I was in total agreeance whenever he made that decision. I’m like, ‘Yeah, absolutely, I’ll be able to get back up through there.’ Then whenever so many cars took two (tires) and we had that immediate yellow. That was a bummer. Ultimately, it was a day that we needed to get out of here with a lot of stage points, a great finish. Just really, really, really stinks to let them get away whenever they’re that close.”
The outcome was almost reminiscent of Phoenix’s most recent race last November, when the dominance of JGR teammate Denny Hamlin in the championship-deciding event was foiled by a bad bounce in pit strategy. Stevens faced a similar choice, one that Bell was on board with.
“I mean, we either needed a couple more laps or we needed that caution not to come after we all pit, you know what I mean, or that first restart could have went a little better,” Stevens told NASCAR.com. “We just maintained on that first restart. The second one, we hit it a lot better and made a lot of ground, you know. So three things, I would say went against us, and we came up one spot short — maybe half a second or a little less. So, easy to Monday-morning quarterback that, and that’s what you have to do, sure. But I don’t know if we take rights that if it played out the same, I think we win, but I don’t know that it plays out the same. You know what I mean? I just don’t know. One of them things. That’s part of it.”
Aside from the sting of the defeat, there was a silver lining to be shared with a pair of Joe Gibbs Racing teammates. Ty Gibbs held the lead late until Blaney powered by for the winning pass with 10 laps left, but held on to finish fourth for the second straight week. Right behind him was Hamlin, who turned in his best result of the season in fifth. Only Chase Briscoe, the first retiree after a midrace crash, was outside the JGR power play on the final leaderboard.
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It was a much-needed boost for the Gibbs group, which owed its lower-rung parking spots in the Cup Series garage this weekend to an organization-wide sluggish start to the 2026 campaign. After Sunday, Bell — who was runner-up in Stage 1 and won the second stage — improved 18 positions to sixth in the Cup standings. Hamlin moved up 11 places to 12th, and Gibbs made a two-spot gain to 15th.
Gibbs just missed notching his first major-league win — a stretch that now spans 127 Cup Series starts — but he instead secured his first consecutive top-five efforts since August 2024.
“That little restart, I don’t know. I could have done a better job, but I also felt really loose, too,” Gibbs said. “We’ll just go back and look at it, but I can’t thank my guys enough. My guys are so great. They’re very loyal, too. So, very loyal group of guys that are badass, and they all believe in me. So working with the right people makes a difference, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Hamlin led just once for five laps Sunday, but he was also one spot better than his last time out at Phoenix, where an elusive first Cup Series title slipped away after a late restart. This time around, Hamlin found some consolation in the fact that his No. 11 Toyota team has improved its results each week.
“I certainly am confident knowing through the weekend that I did all the same things as last fall,” said Hamlin, who led 208 of 319 laps here in November. “Just, we didn’t have the car that we had last fall and didn’t have the setup that we had last fall, and so this is a good step. I mean, our finishes have gotten a little better throughout the whole year. Every finish has gotten a little better. This is a marathon, you know? It’s easy to kind of look at them in the moment, in the weekend, like, ‘All right, well, this is a success or failure,’ but we’re just an inch into a mile, so a long way to go, but we’ve got something to build with.”
Bell, still smarting, agreed.
“I mean, I’m happy,” Bell said of the encouraging effort. “We had a process change over the offseason to try and improve our car performance, and I’m super happy with where we’re at right now. So if we can keep doing this, we’re going to be in good shape.”