Christopher Bell won Sunday’s Shriners Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway, notching his third consecutive victory. Here are the takeaways following the fourth race of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season.
Bell, Byron remain at the top of the heap
Christopher Bell and William Byron have clearly been the best two drivers early on in the season, and Phoenix was simply another example of their speed. Bell, of course, went to victory lane, while Byron won the pole and won Stage 1. When Byron was forced to take the wave around after a caution struck while he was on pit road, he drove back t0 a sixth-place finish. Had the yellows fallen a little differently, he could’ve challenged Bell for the race win.
Mixed bag for Katherine Legge in Cup Debut
A good NASCAR Cup Series debut for Katherine Legge would’ve been a clean race in which she completed all the laps. Unfortunately for Legge, neither of those goals were accomplished, though she did put together a decent debut. After a Lap 4 spin, Legge regrouped and ran the next 200 laps without incident. However, her second spin of the day would be much more costly, as she spun right in front of Daniel Suarez, who crashed into her. The damage on Legge’s Chevrolet was too much to repair. A 30th-place finish isn’t a terrible result for a debut, however, and if Legge runs another Cup race, she’ll have a race’s worth of experience under her belt.
Penske’s dominance doesn’t bloom in the spring
Over the last three years, Team Penske has been far and away the team to beat at Phoenix in the fall. That same dominance hasn’t shown up in the spring, however. Joey Logano was by far the fastest of Roger Penske’s trio on Sunday, but an interesting strategy call put Logano at a tire disadvantage and relegated him to a 13th-place finish. Ryan Blaney was battling for an eighth consecutive top-10 finish on Sunday until his engine went up in smoke, which dropped Blaney to a 28th-place finish. Cindric had the slowest car of the Penske trio, and his rather pedestrian effort led to a 19th-place finish. It’s not exactly worrying that Penske struggles in the spring race as long as they show up in the fall, but ‘The Captain’ probably wouldn’t mind if his drivers could be in contention twice a year at Phoenix.
Shriners Children’s 500 Results:
- Christopher Bell
- Denny Hamlin
- Kyle Larson
- Josh Berry
- Chris Buescher
- William Byron
- Alex Bowman
- Kyle Busch
- Zane Smith
- Chase Elliott
- Ross Chastain
- Austin Dillon
- Joey Logano
- John Hunter Nemechek
- Ryan Preece
- Ty Dillon
- Todd Gilliland
- Erik Jones
- Austin Cindric
- Tyler Reddick
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- AJ Allmendinger
- Daniel Suarez
- Cody Ware
- Ty Gibbs
- Noah Gragson
- Michael McDowell
- Ryan Blaney
- Bubba Wallace
- Katherine Legge
- Shane van Gisbergen
- Cole Custer
- Brad Keselowski
- Justin Haley
- Chase Briscoe
- Carson Hocevar
- Riley Herbst
The fifth race of the 2025 season will take place on March 16 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Pennzoil 400 will go green shortly after 3:30 p.m. ET, with coverage on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
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