LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Coming off a three-race winning streak via Christopher Bell, Joe Gibbs Racing’s momentum came to a screeching halt at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon (March 16).
Not a single JGR car finished in the top 10 in the Pennzoil 400. Bell led the charge in 12th, Chase Briscoe was 17th, Ty Gibbs 22nd and Denny Hamlin 25th.
For Gibbs, the speed was never there, as he had an average running position of 29th. Hamlin had poor luck from the get-go, with a caution coming out right after he made his first pit stop of the day. That plus a speeding penalty trapped him a lap down, and it took numerous cautions before he finally got his lap back.
While Bell and Briscoe didn’t show the speed usually seen from JGR cars, the duo did make the most of their days. Both the Nos. 19 and 20 cars had loose wheels that they bounced back from that could’ve been much worse.
“I mean, just — I don’t know,” Bell said. “It’s fine. It was a grind today for sure. I don’t really know how I feel yet, but we certainly didn’t do what we did the last couple of weeks, and that was just have a nice clean race.”
Briscoe’s wheel came off right after his first pit stop of the day on lap 34. Ironically, his tire brought out the caution that doomed Hamlin.
After a two-lap penalty for losing the tire, as well as the time it took to get the car back and make repairs, Briscoe was four laps down. However, as the cautions kept one coming — the race had nine in all — the No. 19 team eventually found itself back on the lead lap thanks to wave-arounds and free passes. Briscoe went from running dead last to salvaging a 17th. That nearly 20-point swing could come into play come playoff time.
“Oh, yeah, it was tough,” No. 19 crew chief James Small told Frontstretch. “Honestly, just got lucky with when the cautions fell and after we waved, and it kind of all worked out. So sometimes it works for you, sometimes it doesn’t.
“We were lucky to have a chance there to race at the end, and it was all kind of working out really good. I think we’d moved up to being the fourth car on our strategy to get to the end before that yellow and then made some contact with the wall and and dropped back a little bit and got damaged. So yeah, could have been a hell of a lot worse, but, obviously, we want a lot more, so focus on next week.”
Bell never looked poised to win his fourth straight race, but it did seem he had top-10 speed, finishing 10th in stage 1. During a caution in stage 2, Bell hit pit road, and he too left with a loose wheel. Only the No. 20 team caught it right away.
What happened next was something rarely, if ever, seen in a NASCAR race before. Bell had already exited his pit box and was out by the grass when he and the team noticed the loose wheel. Bell then slowed down and swerved to the inside pit lane, as crew chief Adam Stevens ordered him to find any pit box to pull in. Bell pulled into Briscoe’s pit stall, and the No. 19 team came over and tightened the wheel on the No. 20. That saved Bell from being penalized two laps and saved his tire changer and jack man a suspension.
A heads-up call from the No. 20 team, but @CBellRacing will have to restart at the tail of the longest line. pic.twitter.com/Vl8sZlf06x
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) March 16, 2025
“It’s something that we’ve talked about before,” Stevens said. “It’s a situation that’s come up in the past, and it’s been discussed with NASCAR. It could prevent a wheel going across the racetrack or a dangerous situation. So as soon as he [the tire changer] jumped up with his head shaking, we jumped on.”
There was no message from Bell’s team to Briscoe’s to tighten the tire for them. The No. 19 crew just instinctively knew once Bell pulled into their box.
“We just know if a car arrives in our pit box what we need to do,” Small said. “As soon as I saw him trying to get in, I got on our car radio. Chase didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.
“And it was helpful because Christopher was pointing at the left front. So [we] jacked the car up, tightened it up and, yeah, team effort. So, thankfully, we saved him from the same fate we had.”
Still, the incident dropped Bell to the rear of the lead lap, and he could only recover to a 12th-place result. Bell entered Vegas trying to become the first driver since Jimmie Johnson in 2007 to win four straight races. Instead, he didn’t even get a top 10.
“It’s disappointing because we felt like we had more potential in it,” Stevens said. “We’re not gonna win every race, so at some point in time, the streak’s gonna end. That’s what’s disappointing.
“You feel like we could have came here and run top three pretty, not gonna say easily, but handily and couldn’t even muster a top 10 there at the end, but it is what it is. You’ll have days like that, and [I’m] thankful we got finish out of it.”
The Vegas race was plagued by loose wheels, as a handful of more cars had them in addition to Bell and Briscoe. Small had a good explanation for why this problem, that hadn’t been as common since the Next Gen’s first year in 2022, picked up big time in Sin City.
“Just everybody’s pushing it,” Small said. “We have to look at the times, people running low eights [eight-second stops] now, and every everything’s just on the limits. So something’s bound to go wrong, You saw that happen today on our car and many others, so it’s probably not the last of it. It’s just the way the sport is now.”
Regardless, JGR has a lot of work to do on its intermediate program after the Vegas showing. More races like Sunday’s could make it hard for all but Bell, who is already locked in, to make it into the playoffs. If the playoffs started today, only Bell and Hamlin would be in. Briscoe is 20th in points while Gibbs is 34th.
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.
Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.