Competitors respect Bell's streak, but they're ready to end it
Yesterday at 22:50
Kyle Larson knows how good it is to be Christopher Bell.
Until last weekend at Phoenix Raceway, when Bell prevailed again at the finish, Larson had been the most recent driver to win three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series races. On his way to a 10-win season and the championship, Larson won three consecutive races twice in 2021. The first stretch was the Charlotte, Sonoma, and Nashville races. The second stretch was in the postseason with the Charlotte Roval, Texas, and Kansas.
Bell enters Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on a three-race winning streak. He and his team have won at Atlanta, Circuit of The Americas, and Phoenix. In taking the torch from Larson, Bell became the first driver to win three consecutive races in the Next Gen era.
"I had a great season in 2021 and was able to win three points-paying races in a row twice that year four in a row once with the All-Star Race in there," Larson said. "Having lived through it, I can respect it a lot more, and it doesn't bother me … somebody else having success like that."
But then Larson offered a smile and continued by saying, "If he wins this weekend, maybe it's like, ‘Alright, this is getting annoying.’ But as a competitor and a fan, I think it's really neat because this sport is so tough, especially in the Next Gen era. I respect it more than anything currently, but if it keeps going on too long, it'll get annoying."
Las Vegas has thus far eluded Bell in his Cup Series career. He's been one of the most dominant drivers at the track, particularly in the Next Gen era, which began in 2022, with three poles and 248 laps led.
It wasn't hard to find a fellow competitor who admitted respect is where they land on seeing what Bell and his Joe Gibbs Racing team have accomplished, not only because winning at the Cup Series level is never easy, but doing it in a car that was taunted for its parity when first introduced. The combination of talented teams and the field having the same parts and pieces makes Cup Series racing the closest it has perhaps ever been.
When asked about the balance between having respect toward his fellow competitor for the accomplishment and the winning streak being annoying and needing to be stopped, Ryan Blaney laughed. Sunday, Blaney would have to do that from the rear of the field after a blown tire damaged his primary car and kept him from making a qualifying lap.
"It's both," Blaney said. "Christopher and that whole team have been doing a great job for the last three weeks, for sure, and, hey, he's got a great chance to do it again this weekend. They run great here, so he'll be one to beat. You respect that level of performance by your competitors, but at the same time, it's like you said — we've got to stop this. We've got to get these guys off their high horse.
"But you can't overlook how hard that is to do, and they've executed really well the last three weeks and put themselves in a spot to win and in kind of dominating fashion at Phoenix. It was pretty much the same way at COTA. It's tough to beat that. They're a good group, and they've shown that through the years, so yeah, it's a little bit of both."
Tyler Reddick is a Toyota teammate of Bell's through the 23XI Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing alliance. Reddick feels he has a good understanding of how Bell won the last three races, which is where the respect he has for Bell's performance comes from.
"It's difficult to do," Reddick said. "It's just a hard task to be that good."
The driver Bell beat for his third win at Phoenix was teammate Denny Hamlin. Bell drove into Turn 3 underneath Hamlin and moved them both up the track, which put Hamlin at a disadvantage on the high side. For Hamlin, it pushed his winless streak to 29 races.
Since 2006, Hamlin has won 54 races in the Cup Series, and twice in his career he’s won back-to-back races. The first was during the 2010 season at Pocono and Michigan. Two years later, in 2012, he did it again with wins at Bristol and Kansas. But that is as far as a winning streak has ever gone for him.
"I've got to respect how hard it is," Hamlin said of Bell's three-race winning streak. "I've never done it, and I can't recall if I was close in the third race that I was contending for. It's really, really hard, especially under all circumstances, but when you've got things going your way and you're on top of your game, it seems like the basket is 10 feet wide right now for them."
The last time a driver won four consecutive races in the Cup Series was 2007. Jimmie Johnson accomplished the feat during the postseason with wins at Martinsville, Atlanta, Texas, and Phoenix.
"I'm just excited about it," Bell said of the opportunity. "One thing is for sure — nothing that has happened the last three weeks means anything for this week. Everything is still ahead of me and nothing is set, and we have to go out there and perform as soon as the green flag drops in practice. We have to qualify well, and we have to execute the race.
"So I'm optimistic about how we are going to perform, because this has been a strong track for us in the past, but I'm just trying very hard to not get ahead of myself and understand that it's a new week, it's another race and everybody is going to be bringing their best stuff and trying to beat me. I'm optimistic about how we are going to perform, but I understand that it's a tall task."
