Christopher Bell’s Win Caps Toyota’s Stellar Weekend At Phoenix Raceway

AVONDALE, Ariz.: Chevrolet dominated the beginning of the NASCAR Cup Series by claiming three straight wins, beginning with William Byron’s Daytona 500 victory.

As the collection shifted to Phoenix Raceway, Toyota discovered the best gears and switch of the wrenches for a dominating weekend capped by Christopher Bell’s journey to victory lane.

“We have the best notebook to build off of. All of our teammates had moments of being really good,” stated Adam Stevens, Bell’s crew chief. “It’s too early to tell if there is some kind of gap to the field. I don’t think that. I don’t feel that. I just think that we hit it better than everybody else did today.”

Toyota unveiled a brand new Camry physique for the 2024 season, and the journey to Phoenix was the primary with NASCAR’s new brief monitor aerodynamics package deal designed to create extra passing. The race additionally featured new tires with thicker treads designed to retain warmth and fall off faster.

Toyota dialed within the modifications for a dominating weekend.

It kicked off Friday with 17-year-old William Sawalich profitable the rain-shortened ARCA Menards Series race.

On Saturday, Denny Hamlin grabbed the pole for the Cup Series race and his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Ty Gibbs began subsequent to him on the entrance row. Toyota had 4 of the highest six spots for Sunday’s race.

Chandler Smith continued Toyota’s roll in Saturday’s Xfinity race, profiting from Justin Allgaier’s late crash to take the checkered flag.

Hamlin took benefit of getting the primary pit stall in Sunday’s Cup race, twice beating the sector off pit street into the lead. He ran close to the entrance a lot of the afternoon earlier than spinning out whereas making an attempt to overhaul Tyler Reddick for the lead with about 100 laps left. Hamlin completed eleventh.

Bell made up for his JGR teammate’s misfortune, transferring into the lead when Martin Truex Jr. needed to pit for tires and gas. Bell led the ultimate 41 laps and Toyota was up entrance all however 14 laps of the 312-mile race on Phoenix Raceway’s mile tri-oval. Ty Gibbs completed a career-best third.

“I’m just so pleased with the effort at the race shop, all of our guys,” staff proprietor Joe Gibbs stated. “Everybody knows how important Phoenix is. So I think there was a great effort. There was a lot of ‘new’ to it, the new package and all that. I couldn’t be happier with the way today went.”

Same for Bell after struggling heartbreak in Phoenix the previous two years.

At the season finale in November, Bell was among the many remaining 4 drivers vying for the NASCAR championship. His hopes of a primary title crashed to the pavement with a damaged brake rotor that knocked him out early within the race.

Bell and JGR went by way of a tragedy a yr earlier than in Phoenix when staff vice chairman and Gibbs’ son Coy died in his sleep hours after watching his son Ty win the Xfinity championship.

Bell had the quickest automotive all afternoon, overcoming a gradual pit cease for his seventh profession Cup Series victory — all on completely different tracks. The win was Toyota’s first at Phoenix Raceway since Truex’s journey to victory lane in 2021.

“You could be the best on paper, but unless you have the talent behind the steering wheel and the team and the pit crews to put an entire race together, the rest is meaningless,” Toyota Racing Development president David Wilson stated. “Certainly, what we’ve seen four races in validates a lot of our optimism, but we have a whole lot of racing to go, more intermediate (tracks), more big tracks and short tracks to truly evaluate where we are.”

Toyota’s groups clearly bought the setups proper and found out NASCAR’s brief monitor modifications. That might arrange the automotive producer for an additional massive weekend when the Cup Series returns to Phoenix for championship weekend in November.

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AP NASCAR: https://apnews.com/hub/nascar

(This story has not been edited by News18 employees and is revealed from a syndicated information company feed – Associated Press)