Bellwho advanced to the Championship 4 last season with an opportunity to win the series title at Phoenix, blew a brake rotor early in the race and never ever remained in the battle.
Sunday, Bell rallied to win Stage 2, then drove from 20th to initially after the last rest stop and quickly held back Chris Buescher by 5.465 seconds to make his very first win of the 2024 season.
The win snaps Chevrolet’s three-race winning streak to begin the season and provides Toyota a win at a track where it had actually led an overall of 15 laps in the previous 4 races. Bell led two times Sunday for 50 laps.
Bell was amongst a group of cars and trucks that chose to pit on lap 218 of 312 throughout what ended up being the last care of the race.
The leading 9 avoided. Bell, on 4 brand-new tires and with a lot of fuel, recovered the lead when Martin Truex Jrwas required to pit for fuel and led the last 41 laps.
Bell’s Joe Gibbs Racing colleague, Ty Gibbswound up 3rd, Brad Keselowski 4th and Ryan Blaney was 5th.
Finishing the leading 10 were Ross ChastainTruex, Michael McDowell Chase Briscoe and Tyler Reddick
“Man, this one feels actually excellent. Simply a credit to Adam (Stevens, team chief), my engineers, all the mechanics on this thing,” Bell stated. “You do not get automobiles like that extremely frequently. Simply extremely, extremely proud. Happy to be on this No. 20 vehicle.
“This vehicle was remarkable today. I seem like we have the ability of running races like this a lot. Ideally, this is the very first of numerous this year.”
Phase 1
Reddick passed Gibbs with 3 of 60 last staying and hung on to declare the Stage 1 win by 0.565 seconds. Denny Hamlin was 3rd, Erik Jones 4th and Chase Elloitt finished the leading 10.
Derek Kraus spun around on the exit of Turn 2 6 laps