Dale Earnhardt Jr. weighs in on Christopher Bell vs. Denny Hamlin, questions teammate grace

The final laps at Phoenix provided a thrilling finish for viewers, with Christopher Bell outracing Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson to the finish line. It was a 1-2 finish for Joe Gibbs Racing, which drew some interest after the race.

A post-race Bell interview provided an interesting sequence. He was asked about the tight finish.

“I mean I thought that was just great racing,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on the Dale Jr. Download. “I thought it was funny because during the post-race interview, see if you can find this, they’re interviewing Christopher Bell in a frustrated way and he is being his true self, happy about his win, then it kind of, either he saw the 11 out of the corner of his eye on pit road or something, but he goes, ‘How about that, a 1-2 finish for Joe Gibbs Racing?’ and it was like this real kind of awkward moment.

“It was kind of this moment where he was like yeah I know Denny’s probably not really that happy with running second, but ‘Hey, 1-2!’ He was trying to reinforce. It was funny.”

Truthfully, though, the finish did provide a question mark. Would Christopher Bell have raced things differently had it not been a Joe Gibbs Racing counterpart next to him?

At least Earnhardt believes Bell would have approached things slightly differently. He noted:

“The Cup guys, dang, they just assume,” Earnhardt said. “I mean Christopher Bell pushed it about as far as you’re going to see guys push it in the Cup Series. I’m sure there might have been a little contact (if it wasn’t a teammate). If that’s not Denny Hamlin the car probably ends up in the fence a little bit. He gave Denny a little bit of a break. He tried to race Denny as clean as he possibly could.”

To which, Earnhardt Jr. offered praise. Bell struck the right balance.

“I mean literally Christopher Bell did the perfect amount of aggression without putting the guy in the wall,” Earnhardt said.