Christopher Bell was just ahead of Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin after a late restart, in good position to win his third straight NASCAR Cup Series race. Another restart led to some tense moments – enough to make his team owner feel a bit queasy. Bell survived a late drag race with Hamlin to become the first NASCAR Cup Series driver to win three straight races in the NextGen car, edging his teammate by 0.049 seconds to win the second-closest race in Phoenix Raceway history on Sunday. “It worked out about as opposite as I could have drawn it up in my head,” Bell said. “But the races that are contested like that, looking back, are the ones that mean the most to you.” Bell started 11th in the 312-mile race after winning at Atlanta and Circuit of America the previous two weeks. The JGR driver moved toward the front early and remained there most of the afternoon, taking the lead out of the pits on a late caution. Bell stayed out front on two late restarts, holding off his teammate by the nose of his car on the final one to become the first driver to win three straight races since Kyle Larson in 2021. He’s the fourth driver in Cup Series history to win three times in the first four races – first since Kevin Harvick in 2018. “We’ve had four races this year, put ourselves in position in all four and managed to win three, which is a pretty remarkable batting average – something that will be hard to maintain, I believe,” Bell’s crew chief Adam Stevens said. The Phoenix race was the first since Richmond last year to give teams two sets of option tires. The option red tires have much better grip, but start to fall off after about 35 laps, creating an added strategic element. A handful of racers went to the red tires early – Joey Logano and Ryan Preece among them – and it paid off with runs to the lead before falling back. Bell was among those who had a set of red tires left for the final stretch and used it to his advantage, pulling away from Hamlin on a restart with 17 laps left. Another caution made it closer than Bell and his team would have liked. “I was ready to upchuck,” JGR Racing owner Joe Gibbs said. Hamlin pulled alongside Bell’s No. 20 Toyota over the final two laps after the restart and seemed to be slightly ahead at the white flag. The teammates bumped a couple times while jockeying for position, but Bell barely managed to keep ahead of Hamlin, crossing the checkered flag with a wobble for his 12th career Cup Series win. He led 105 laps. “I kind of had position on the 20, but I knew he was going to ship it in there,” Hamlin said. “We just kind of ran out of race track there.” Kyle Larson finished third, Josh Berry fourth and Chris Buescher rounded out the top five. Katherine Legge became the first woman to race on the Cup Series since Danica Patrick at the Daytona 500 seven years ago. Her race didn’t get off to a great start. The end wasn’t great, either.