By Luis Torres, Staff Writer/Photographer
AVONDALE, Ariz. – The Joe Gibbs Racing quartet showed their muscle in Sunday’s Straight Talk Wireless 500 at Phoenix Raceway with three of them finishing in the top-five, but none of them went to victory lane and one ended up crashing out early.
Christopher Bell led the trio with the dominant car, leading a race-high 176 laps, but short green flag runs during the final stage affected his afternoon when it mattered most. Rather than celebrating back-to-back March victories at Phoenix, Bell finished second behind Ryan Blaney.
After the race, Bell felt he had the race had long green flag runs, his No. 20 Toyota could’ve caught Blaney but ran out of laps.
“I think we could have made a run at him. I don’t know. You win some, you lose some,” said Bell. “This one stings, but on the positive side I’m really proud of our entire team. The pit crew did amazing. Adam (Stevens, crew chief) brought an amazing car. Our mechanics, engineers did really good.
“It’s something to build on. I don’t know. It was a day that we needed. We got a lot of stage points, finished second. Yeah, just bummed whenever they get away like that.”
Two spots behind Bell is his JGR teammate Ty Gibbs, who once again extend his continuous winless streak in his NASCAR Cup Series career.
Gibbs commented that while it’s unfortunate to come up close of finally taking the checkered flag, he’s still proud of his No. 54 team for bringing a strong car and being able to prove its worth on the track.
“That makes a difference. We’re running good because of that. It shows,” said Gibbs, who led 12 laps.
“Really happy with my team, everybody has done a great job, everybody believes in me, we all believe in each other. Happy with that.
“It’s so rubbered up you can’t even see the number. Very happy with today and how everything went. Congrats to the 12 (Blaney), they were really fast. I’ll keep working, see where I can do better.”
Behind Gibbs is Denny Hamlin, who got his first top-five of the season, which certainly boosts the No. 11 team’s morale a little bit. While his cars have won the first three races with Tyler Reddick behind the wheel, Hamlin said his efforts in the car he drives can find room for improvement.
“Just a fringe top three to four car all day. That’s kind of all we had. The 20 and 12 were standouts there,” Hamlin commented.
“(We) need to be a little better. There’s not much else you can say. We’ll download, figure out how we can be a little better. Seemed like a couple of our teammates there were really good that we can learn from. Good top five and we’ll move on.”
The caboose out of the JGR stable was Chase Briscoe, who dealt with vibrations issues throughout the race and it bit him in the dust in Stage 2. Déjà vu to a year ago when fighting for a championship last November, a flat left front tire impacted Briscoe’s day.
Only this time, he slid into the Turn 3 wall, sustaining irreversible damage and thus, brought the car to the garage, finishing last out of the 37-car field.
“When I had my vibration, I told them that I thought it was in the front end. Just par for the course for how this year started,” Briscoe explained. “It was another car that was extremely fast, felt like we were certainly going to be in contention for the win and just another failure for us.
“Definitely frustrating, we’ll go on to next week and see if we can turn it around with our Bass Pro Shops Toyota team.”
JGR will now head to Las Vegas Motor Speedway where Hamlin won the last time the Cup Series visited Nevada. Coverage begins Sunday, March 15 at 4:00 p.m. ET on FS1.
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