Take 5: Toyota Owners 400

Another short-track Saturday evening is in the books at Richmond Raceway with a night-and-day blend of long green-flag runs in the early going and a scramble of highly charged restarts at the end. With the Toyota Owners 400 complete, we'll dig into five storylines from the ninth race of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season.

TRUEX TROUBLES: Martin Truex Jr. seemed poised for his first career short-track win, starting from the Busch Pole and leading a race-high 121 laps on the .75-mile layout. But a sluggish pit stop caused by problems with the jack dropped the Furniture Row Racing No. 78 team from contention and left Truex with a 14th-place outing.'Pretty disappointed that we didn’t get at least a chance,' Truex said. 'It’s unfortunate, but I don’t know what we have to do to win one of these short tracks and get everything to go the way we need it to. Tonight we beat ourselves, so that’s unfortunate.'

STREAK TO THE FINISH: The Monster Energy Series has been marked by a season of streaks -- Kevin Harvick's three-race string in February and March, and Kyle Busch matching the three-in-a-row tear with a dominant April, including Saturday night's rally for his fifth career Richmond victory. Harvick's bid for four straight ended with a damaged race car at Auto Club Speedway. Busch's attempt will take place next week at Talladega Superspeedway, one of the circuit's most fickle tracks. 'I think it's easier to win the Powerball than win at Talladega,' said Busch, who has one win in 25 Talladega starts. 'We'll give it a go anyway, see what we get.'

A PRODUCTIVE CHASE: Chase Elliott landed his best finish of the season, starting and ending his day at Richmond in second place. But the post-race feelings for Elliott were mixed; Hendrick Motorsports' No. 9 team has made strides, but it marked the eighth runner-up result of his career without a win. 'Yeah, I mean I think it’s been a steady work in progress,' Elliott said. 'We certainly have work to do and we know that.  The results tonight, I don’t feel like … I think if we looked at the results we would feel OK about it, but I think in reality we shouldn't feel OK about it. We need to go back and really focus on getting better.'

PLENTY OF GREEN: Saturday's event ticked off the first 354 laps without an unplanned caution period (two yellows flew after Laps 100 and 200 to mark the breaks between stages). Theories about the majority of the race going incident-free were plenty, with Joey Logano suggesting less attrition and fewer tire troubles deserved some of the credit. But not all. 'The drivers are really, really good,' Logano said with a smirk. 'I mean, it's all on the drivers. Drivers are amazing, really. The best drivers in the world.'

LOGANO LAMENT: Joey Logano also came away from Richmond matching his best finish of the year, leading 92 of the 402 laps and sweeping the first two stage wins. But the fight for ideal handling and a shake-up of restarts over the final stretch left Logano wishing for more. 'I wish I could re-run that,' Logano said. 'I feel like we can do better if we tried again. I am sure the whole field would say that. I am proud of the speed we showed at Richmond. Just want to be a little better.'