Most recently among current full-time drivers, Joey Logano and Kyle Busch earned three straight trophies in 2015. Brad Keselowski and Busch won three races in a row in 2018. Larson is the last to accomplish the feat -- doing it twice in his 2021 championship-winning season. Eleven times the driver who has won three straight has gone on to win the title that same year.
RELATED: Sunday's starting lineup | Weekend scheduleBell smiled and said the consecutive wins would be nice, but it’s not top of mind for Sunday's Shriners Children's 500 (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Phoenix Raceway.
"That would be something I’d probably think about afterwards, but right now it just feels like a normal week, a week where we have a great opportunity because this is a great track for me and I’m excited about the opportunity, not thinking about three in a row," Bell said, acknowledging he’s currently on a solid streak of success with wins at Atlanta and Circuit of The Americas in the last two weeks.
"Certainly, the confidence is high. And it’s just very refreshing to know we’ve improved our weaknesses. It’s tough, because the last part of the schedule, the two speedways and then the road course, literally none of that translates into what we’ll be doing here in Phoenix. That being said, this is a strength for us and we know we should be competitive if we do our jobs right."
Everything has been going right for Bell and his No. 20 Toyota team in the two races after a late-race crash while battling for the lead short-circuited his Daytona 500 effort. That 31st-place DNF was followed by an overtime victory at Atlanta on a drafting-style track on Feb. 23, then a convincing triumph at COTA and its winding road-course layout. MORE: At-track photos: Phoenix | Paint Scheme Preview With those three races steeped in unpredictability behind us, Bell & Co. head into a more traditional span of the schedule, starting Sunday at Phoenix's mile. Five more ovals -- a mix of intermediate-sized venues and short tracks -- follow Phoenix, and Bell's prospects during that stretch seem high. He's already two-thirds of the way toward equaling his three-win total from last season. "I don't think there's a place we go to where we shouldn't be competitive," said No. 20 crew chief Adam Stevens. "Certainly, the Atlanta win, just by virtue of it being a speedway, is a little bit unexpected and the manner that it happened was probably even more unexpected. All we can do is put ourselves in position, and we did that plenty of times last year and it just didn't work out as often as we'd like. So far this year, we've had three races and put ourselves in position three times, and it's worked out twice. I don't think we're going to continue that batting average all year, but it's just up to us to do everything we can to put ourselves in that spot." Contributing: Zack Albert at Phoenix