Hamlin left searching for answers as Bell wins – Sports News
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin is not fully sure why his teammate Christopher Bell has enjoyed such a strong start to the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season.
After not being able to finish the season-opening Daytona 500 last month, Bell has gone on to win the last three Cup Series races, the most recent of which came during the Shriners Children’s 500 over the weekend.
The race at Phoenix Raceway came down to a photo finish between Hamlin and his JGR teammate Bell, with the latter pipping the former, much to his chagrin.
Immediately after Bell’s win, Hamlin could be heard over the team radio swearing loudly, with the JGR driver saying: “God dammit! F—!”
And despite the fact Bell and Hamlin are teammates, the latter is not sure why the former is enjoying such a strong start to the season, in part because he admits he is not “embedded with their team” as much as his own.
Speaking to FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass, Hamlin said: “It’s so hard for me to try and analyze it from the outside because I’m not embedded with their team as much as I am with my own team.
“Obviously, you see a gain in performance there but you don’t…it could be a lot of different things. Is it our cars are better, is it circumstances in a speedway race or a road course race like this one, I guess he probably dominated.
“I don’t know, circumstances or not, three in a row is pretty impressive and whatever they’re doing, it’s working well.”
Bell said following the win in Phoenix: “Three straight, it’s surreal. 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.’
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Bell added: “I am just so proud. I’m so proud of all 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.”
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