Denny Hamlin hypes JGR teammate’s NASCAR Championship chances

With a couple of wins already this year, and a strong showing at Gateway recently, Christopher Bell has earned Denny Hamlin's confidence. The Joe Gibbs Racing veteran recently spoke about Bell's chances of being a contender for this year's Cup championship.

Speaking on Actions Detrimental, Hamlin mentioned that Bell, by showing speed for the second week in a row at "these mile flat tracks," has registered himself as a major championship candidate, provided he makes it to Phoenix.

"If he can make it to Phoenix, he's going to be a threat. He was really strong there last year when he made it to the final 4. He just blew a brake rotor. So I think certainly they've got a balance or something that he likes that is working well," Hamlin said of Bell.

So far this season, Christopher Bell has put together a good string of results. He opened his 2024 campaign with a 3rd place finish at the Daytona 500. A couple of weeks later, Bell was in the victory lane at Phoenix, which he followed with a top-10 finish at Bristol, and a 2nd place finish at COTA. Since then, he's had three more finishes inside the top-10, along with another win, which came at Charlotte in the Coca-Cola 600.

Hamlin tries making sense of Bell's perception in NASCAR

Christopher Bell has made it to the final 4 in the last two seasons. However, he is still consistently regarded as an underdog, something Denny Hamlin tried to make sense of. Speaking about Bell on Actions Detrimental in April earlier this year, Hamlin mentioned what Bell thought about the same.

"He says, 'Because I don't lead laps like my teammates, while I do win races, I do run upfront.'" [56:30]"What people talk about is who's controlling the race, who's showing that they're the best... its style points," Hamlin described.

The #11 driver continued as he said that Bell believes his underdog status is "somewhat warranted" because he doesn't run upfront as much as his other two teammates, Denny Hamlin himself and Martin Truex Jr.

It's worth mentioning that Bell has won a race in all of his full-time seasons except for his rookie one. He has won 8 races in the last four seasons for Joe Gibbs Racing. In the same period of time, Hamlin has won 10 races while Truex has won 6, which shows that Bell has been the second best Joe Gibbs Racing driver in the last 4 seasons.