RICHMOND, Va. — Joey Logano’s 550th NASCAR Cup Series start nearly had the makings of his 33rd Cup Series victory, a would-be triumph that would have broken a yearlong dry spell. Instead, his Sunday night showing at Richmond Raceway yielded a building-block outcome that produced positives after a shaky launch to the season.
Logano finished second in Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400, gaining one spot in an overtime scramble but winding up just 0.269 seconds short of eventual winner Denny Hamlin at the checkered flag. The result marked his first top-five finish of the season, providing a boost to the No. 22 Team Penske group. Even then, Logano admitted there was a bittersweet nature to the evening.
“It feels good, and it hurts at the same time because we were so close to winning the race,” Logano said. “I mean, it’s a race track that we expect to run well at, it’s our best race track and we’ve been consistently in the top five and having shots to win.”
Top-five territory is where Logano spent much of the evening after working his way up from a 10th-place starting spot, evidenced by an average running position of 4.6, per NASCAR’s loop data. Stage finishes of fifth and third added to his points total, and by the time the final-stage pit strategies shook out, Logano had moved into second place and in a dogged pursuit of Martin Truex Jr.’s dominant No. 19 Toyota, which led the most laps (228).
Before Kyle Larson’s spin after contact from Bubba Wallace with two laps remaining in regulation forced overtime, Logano was methodically searching for ways to cut into Truex’s lead.
“I started pressuring the 19 at the end of that long run, and he got to racing hard with Ross (Chastain) trying to stay on the lead lap,” Logano said. “I said, ‘This is my opportunity.’ I got Denny to burn his stuff up trying to pass me, and I said, ‘OK, this is my chance,’ and I got close to him and burned my stuff up with about three (laps) to go, and I wasn’t going to get him.”
Sunday’s result was Logano’s fourth consecutive top-10 finish at Richmond, and crew chief Paul Wolfe remarked that the performance was close to the best showing here for the No. 22 team since the advent of the Next Gen car in 2022. Wolfe said that the team made gains with learnings from Logano’s participation in a Goodyear tire test March 13-14 at North Wilkesboro Speedway, but that more gains were made in keeping up morale after a rough opening stretch to the season.
“I think it’s good for the team, for Joey,” Wolfe told NASCAR.com. “I mean, it’s not easy when you look at where we’re at in the garage and 22nd in points and you’re just in a place where you haven’t been before. You’ve got to be careful. It’s easy to get down and lose focus. So these next couple of weeks, I felt like it’d be good opportunities for us. Going to Martinsville next week is another good one. So yeah, it was a great day, came up a little short, but we’re going to keep working.”
Logano has gained 11 spots in the Cup Series standings in the last three weeks with finishes of 22nd at Bristol and 11th at Circuit of The Americas swaying the pendulum back in a positive direction. In Saturday’s interview sessions, Logano said that there were no quick fixes to the team’s early struggles, but another three-spot jump up to 19th in the points Sunday night offers at least incremental help.
“I don’t know if this completely takes us out of the deep end,” Logano said, “but I think ultimately it’s a good momentum-builder, for sure.”
The start of Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 was soggy, damp and wet.
But more importantly, it happened.
Goodyear’s wet-weather tires saved a significant delay at Richmond Raceway, an option still new to the NASCAR Cup Series on ovals but welcomed as drizzles hit the Virginia commonwealth shortly before the scheduled green flag.
Goodyear’s wet-weather oval tires first hit the track competitively with Cup Series cars last year at North Wilkesboro Speedway in the All-Star Race exhibition, but Sunday at Richmond marked the series’ first endeavor into damp oval conditions in a points-paying event. NASCAR officials deemed the track wet shortly before driver introductions and required teams to put on the treaded Goodyear rubber.
A brief hold between the national anthem and the command to start engines became the only true delay to Sunday’s action, with pace laps and green-flag racing on a dampened asphalt surface shining bright under the Richmond lights.
“First of all, credit to (NASCAR CEO) Jim France. This was his vision,” Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, said post-race. “A couple of years ago, he tasked the R&D Center and Goodyear to come up with a tire that we could run in the damp, and tonight was a success. We were able to get the race started pretty much on time. The guys did a great job with the tire. Goodyear did a phenomenal job.”
As the track dried from the combined lack of precipitation and extra heat from the tires and race cars, officials called for a competition caution at Lap 30, freezing the field and bringing everyone to pit road for non-competitive pit stops to replace the wet-weather treaded tires with traditional racing slicks. The decision to keep those stops non-competitive stemmed largely from safety. Sunday’s race marked only the third instance of wet-weather tires on a short oval in competition, factoring in a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series contest into both Sunday’s race and last year’s All-Star Race.
“Unlike road courses when pit road is wet, where we would allow the teams to make the decisions whether to put drys or wets on,” Sawyer explained, “on the short ovals, we’re still not to a place where we feel comfortable doing that. We’re looking out for the safety. This is only our third event that we’ve actually run wet-weather tires. …
“So we have another data point. That’s one thing we want to work hard on; is to be able to start the race, put all the competition in the teams’ hands and strategy. When to put tires on, when to take them off and the sanctioning body not be in the middle of that decision-making. I think we’ll get there sooner than later.”
The green flag for Sunday’s race was scheduled for 7:12 p.m. ET but flew at 7:31 — an official delay of just 19 minutes.
“We could have been sitting there another hour getting everything dry like we have in the past,” Sawyer said. “So again, huge credit to everyone that put the effort in to get us to this point with the tires and a huge success. We’ll learn from this, and we’ll be able to make better decisions going forward.”
RICHMOND, Va. – Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Larson were the class of the NASCAR Cup Series field in Sunday night’s Easter special at Richmond Raceway, leading 372 of the 407 laps in the Toyota Owners 400. It’s that extra seven laps and the critical moments leading up to it when everything fell apart for both.
Truex’s hopes for his first Cup Series win of the season were dashed when three occurrences unraveled the race for the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing veteran. There was the late caution that forced overtime, the loss of one spot in the race off pit road, and the fateful final green flag when teammate Denny Hamlin scooted by with a quick-reflex restart and pushed his way to the point.
It all equaled a fourth-place finish for a driver who spent most of the night in first, a frustrating result at a track where Truex has won three times but has lost a handful more under heartbreaking circumstances.
“Unfortunately, it’s happened to us a few times in Richmond here,” said Truex, who led a race-high 228 laps. “You know, lead the whole race and then some stupid, some dumbass move brings out a caution coming to the white flag and ruins our whole night, so it was unfortunate. But honestly, just awesome job by my team. The Auto-Owners Camry was a rocket. It was something like we’ve had here in the past, and unfortunately, this has happened to us a few times. Come in with the lead, go out second to the fastest pit crew on pit road is, it’s a tough one to swallow. But I feel like we still could’ve had a race for it, but just got used up in Turn 1 on the restart.”
Truex used his No. 19 Toyota’s bumper to show his disdain for two targets on the cool-down lap. Larson, who scraped by him for third place in the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, was first after the two came together multiple times in the final lap of overtime. Truex also nudged Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota before parking on pit road, telling reporters later that he felt his teammate had one, jumped the overtime restart, and two, aggressively forced his way by in the first turn.
“I just, I felt like the 11 used me up down there in Turn 1, and I didn’t really appreciate a teammate racing me like that,” said Truex, who leaves Richmond with his lead in the Cup Series standings intact — now 14 points over new second-place driver Larson. “I wish he would have, you know, gave me a chance. But yeah, that’s the way it is. And then, the 5 just bumped me, drove into the side of me in Turns 1 and 2, and I got a little loose down the backstretch. I don’t know if my left-rear (tire) was going down or what, and I kind of slammed into him. No big deal.”
Hamlin defended his restart tactics, saying that eventual second-place finisher Joey Logano was laying back and that Truex was inching ahead. “I wasn’t going to let them have an advantage that my team earned on pit road,” said Hamlin, who added that he “went right at it” as he reached the restart zone. “Certainly made sure I went to my nose, got there, but I took off right away. Still, we were side by side down the water into Turn 1.”
Larson led twice for 144 laps, and when his No. 5 Chevy wasn’t out front, it was typically found running second to Truex. Larson seemed to get the upper hand on a pit-stop exchange when he squeezed his way in front of Truex, using the first pit stall he earned as the pole winner to his advantage, but the No. 19 Toyota reasserted his strength and regained the spot from Larson five laps later.
Larson faded slightly during the last green-flag run on what crew chief Cliff Daniels called a mismatched set of tires, but his night threatened to take a more drastic turn when Bubba Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota clipped him at the exit of Turn 4 with two laps left in regulation. Larson’s No. 5 dipped into the frontstretch grass, and he quickly righted himself, asking Daniels if he’d only lost two spots in the off-course excursion. Daniels replied yes, saying he planned on getting them back.
Patrick Vallely | For NASCAR.com
“Just good fortune, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t really know how to describe it,” Larson said with a laugh. “Just got lucky. Got lucky that I had room to spin and thankfully I was hoping the grass wasn’t going to be too slick, and I kind of got it pointed somewhat straighter when I got to the grass. That helped me get going. So just yeah, thanking my lucky stars.”
Wallace walked 20-some pit stalls from his parking spot on pit road to offer a face-to-face apology, taking Larson by the shoulder to explain his side and to make a mention about karma. Larson finished one spot better than where he was running at the time of his spin; Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota crew had trouble fastening a left-side wheel on the team’s final pit stop, and he wound up 13th. “Whatever’s coming my way, I know it,” Wallace told Larson. “I expect it.”
“I appreciate it for sure,” Larson said. “I guess I would have been pissed off if I would have fully spun, and his comment or his apology probably wouldn’t have mattered as much right now, but I would have eventually gotten over it. Because I kept going straight, and he came up, whatever, it’s good. We’ve had our run-ins, and I don’t think tonight was anything intentional.”
As for his back-and-forth with Truex on the two-lap overtime dash, Larson said he felt he was just a convenient scapegoat for Truex’s earlier frustration with Hamlin.
“Martin, I don’t know if his spotter didn’t say that I was inside of him or what, but he just hung a left and hit my right-front, had me up on the apron and then turned left on me down the middle of the backstretch,” Larson said. “So I kind of just, we’re drag-racing to the start/finish line and didn’t really care at that point if I was going to squeeze him in the wall since he decided to turn left on me down the backstretch. So I think, ultimately, he’s just mad at Denny, and I was the closest guy to him to take some anger out on.”
Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team gave him a clutch pit stop to emerge with the lead out of the pits and then was able to hold the advantage on a two-lap overtime shootout to claim the Toyota Owners 400 victory Sunday night at Richmond Raceway, his home track.
It was Hamlin’s 53rd career NASCAR Cup Series win, second of the season and fifth victory at the 0.75-mile Richmond oval — a 0.269-second margin of victory over Team Penske’s Joey Logano. And it came at the expense of his JGR teammate Martin Truex Jr., who finished fourth despite leading a dominant 228 of the race’s 407 laps.
“This was a team win for sure,” said Hamlin, who led 17 laps on the night. “Each one of these pit crew members just did an amazing job. They’ve been killing it all year.
“Such a great feeling when you can come in and have a pit crew like that.”
It was a frustrating ending for Truex, who had been out front 54 consecutive laps in his No. 19 JGR Toyota when a caution flag flew with only two laps of regulation remaining. On the ensuing pit stop, Hamlin beat him off pit road, and Truex was unable to take the lead back in that final two-lap run, ultimately getting passed by Logano for second and polesitter Kyle Larson for third.
“It’s unfortunate, but it’s happened a few times over the years,” Truex said. “We were in a great spot and had a great Auto Owners Camry all night long and the guys did a really good job. Just got beat out of the pits and then he [Hamlin] jumped the start and just used me up in Turn 1.
“Definitely sucks. Another car capable of winning. We’ll just have to come back next week and try to get one.”
The silver lining for Truex is that he still holds the championship lead by 14 points over Larson, who had a busy ending to the race. Contact between Hendrick Motorsports’ Larson and 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace brought out the final yellow flag to force the first overtime period for a NASCAR Cup Series race this season.
Larson was still able to come out fourth place on the pit stop and challenge for the win, although he and Truex banged doors in the closing laps fighting for position.
“My pit crew did a really good job to get us off pit road and get us those spots to restart fourth and gain one more,” Larson said. “I’ll take third after what could have been a lot worse there on the front stretch. Proud of the HendrickCars.com team.
“It was a good weekend for us, winning the pole, winning a stage and getting back to third. Happy about that.”
As for the late race contact between him and a frustrated Truex, Larson said: “I think he was just mad. He was mad the 11 [Hamlin] used him up on the restart and that’s probably where it really started from.
“I think he was more mad at Denny, but I was the closest one for him to take his anger out on,” Larson added with a smile.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell, Hendrick’s William Byron, RFK Racing teammates Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher and 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick rounded out the top 10. Stewart-Haas Racing’s Josh Berry finished 11th, having run in the top-10 most of the night and Wallace, who also ran top 10 most of the race finished 13th after that late race contact with Larson and a slow pit stop before the overtime shootout.
Of note, with the track still damp from afternoon showers, the field started the race on wet-weather tires. NASCAR threw a competition caution at Lap 30, bringing the cars down pit road for a mandatory change to racing slicks. And cars returned to the track in the order they were running at the time of caution. The move to use the wet weather tires allowed the race to start only a few minutes late and was widely praised.
The NASCAR Cup Series moves to another short-track challenge on April 7 with the Cook Out 400 (3 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Martinsville Speedway. Larson is the defending race winner.
NOTE: Post-race technical inspection concluded without issue, confirming Hamlin as the race winner. The Nos. 5, 8, 12 and 20 cars will be taken to the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina for engine dyno testing, with the Nos. 12 and 20 vehicles scheduled to receive further inspection.
RICHMOND, Va. — The start of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway featured wet-weather tires due to damp conditions.
The Toyota Owners 400 was scheduled for a 7 p.m. ET start, broadcast on FOX, MRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. But rain showers lingered around the 0.75-mile track, delaying the start of the seventh of 36 points-paying Cup Series races this season. Goodyear’s wet-weather tires helped NASCAR hit the track sooner than usual, however, with its rubber featuring treads to help shed water from the racing surface, along with defoggers placed inside the car to eliminate windshield condensation.
Kyle Larson’s No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet led the field from the No. 1 starting position, a spot earned with a fast lap of 120.332 mph in Saturday’s Busch Light Pole qualifying. He was flanked on the front row by teammate Chase Elliott in the No. 9 Chevy.
Per the NASCAR Rule Book, if the Series Managing Director declares wet-weather conditions prior to race start, all vehicles must make a tire configuration change and will retain their original starting positions. As the track dried out under green-flag conditions, NASCAR officials called a competition caution at Lap 30 for teams to perform non-competitive pit stops and change back to traditional slick racing tires. Because the stops were not competitive, the running order was not impacted by the speed of the stops.
Alex Daus | NASCAR.com
Competition officials have a fleet of track-drying equipment available this weekend — six Toyota Tundra dryers, three jet dryers, one vacuum truck and one sweeper.
The 400-lap, 300-mile race is the first of two stops for the Cup Series at Richmond Raceway this year. The circuit returns for the Cook Out 400 weekend Aug. 10-11, with the Craftsman Truck Series’ Clean Harbors 250 as a companion event.
RICHMOND, Va. — Ryan Blaney sits third in the NASCAR Cup Series standings after six races this season, but his Ford’s blue oval is on an island in a sea of Chevrolet bow ties and Toyota ellipses in the top portion of the points so far.
Ford aims for its first Cup Series win of the year in Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 (7 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Richmond Raceway, and Blaney — the defending Cup champion — figures to be a likely candidate for making that breakthrough happen. Ford teams are currently in an adjustment period with their new Mustang Dark Horse body for the 2024 season, but Blaney and his No. 12 Team Penske group have separated themselves from the rest, keeping up their pace from last season’s title-winning finish.
Austin Cindric, Blaney’s teammate in the No. 2 Penske Ford, offered a candid explanation for why that is.
“I think Ryan and his team, you guys all saw it at the end of last year, execution, confidence in the packages that they bring,” Cindric said after Saturday’s qualifying session at the 0.75-mile track. “Execution, I say it twice — it is so critically important and I would say, quite frankly, that used to be one of Ryan’s weaknesses. He’s always been extremely fast and now I think it’s one of his strengths and he’s probably better than most in the field at doing it. Between him and that team — that pit crew has gotten a lot of criticism over the years and those guys are executing probably better than most on pit road.
“I don’t want to jinx anybody, but they set a great example for us within the team as far as what it takes to be the best and consistently do that each week.”
After crashing out of the season-opening Daytona 500, Blaney strung together three consecutive top-five finishes to briefly hold the Cup Series points lead. Other Ford drivers — notably, fellow Penske driver and two-time Cup champ Joey Logano — have made slow starts to the year. RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher is the only other Ford campaigner among the top 15 in the series standings.
Blaney says there’s still room for growth to make the Mustang Dark Horse more competitive as the season progresses.
“It’s a place we got to improve a little bit, just kind of overall,” said Blaney, who will start 12th in Sunday’s 400-lap race. “Toyota has done a good job of having a new car and figuring out what they need to do right away to be competitive. We did a lot of hard work in the winter trying to figure out, ‘OK, where’s the maximum potential of this new car,’ and we just haven’t quite hit that yet, and we’re working on it. I mean, you’re trying and it’s hard to do, especially when there’s no testing or anything like that. You don’t know where you’re at until you unload at the race track.
“There’s a handful of things I think we can improve on, but they’re all little. Little things go a long way, so I think we’re close as a group. It’s just a matter of ironing out a few things — car, engine — and I think we’ll be right there.”
RICHMOND, Va. — There’s optimism brewing in the Toyota camp for Sunday night’s NASCAR Cup Series event at Richmond Raceway (7 ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), and with a race name like Toyota Owners 400, why wouldn’t there be? Recent ownership of Victory Lane real estate at the 0.75-mile oval, however, has been fleeting.
The last three Richmond winners have been Chris Buescher in a Ford (August 2023), Kyle Larson in a Chevrolet (April 2023) and Kevin Harvick in his final Cup Series victory with a Ford (July 2022). Strong showings in the last three races this season, however, have the automaker’s drivers bullish on reversing that trend.
“I’m excited for this race. All week I’ve been excited to get here and kind of see where we stack up,” said Denny Hamlin, driver of Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 11 Toyota and a four-time Richmond winner in his homestate stomping grounds. “Certainly, with the history we have here over the last three or four races here at Richmond, being in contention, I feel pretty strongly about it. I would say that this is one that historically that I’ve always been good at, JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) has always been really good at, and then with the momentum it seems like our cars have, and our manufacturer — hopefully, we can tack on that little extra speed that we’ve shown here lately.”
Hamlin’s nod to history acknowledges just how successful his Joe Gibbs Racing team has been at Richmond. The organization has 18 wins here — the most of any track — and the most recent of those was Hamlin’s victory in the springtime event in 2022. JGR also has completed single-season sweeps of both Cup Series races at Richmond five times since 2009.
“I just like driving for JGR here,” said Christopher Bell, a three-time Richmond winner in Xfinity Series competition looking for his first Cup win here. “Their résumé speaks for itself, and the cars are super, super fast. This is arguably JGR’s best race track and so I just love going to race tracks where I know I’m going to have a shot at it.”
Fellow Toyota team 23XI Racing has shown indications of adding to those performance plusses and driving a wedge into Chevy’s top-four sweep of Saturday’s pole qualifying. 23XI’s Tyler Reddick led 81 laps in the Cup circuit’s most recent race at Richmond, and teammate Bubba Wallace led 80.
This season, the speed from Toyota’s new Camry XSE model for Cup Series competition has been a positive. Toyota drivers have won two of the last three Cup events; the one race they didn’t win — last weekend at Circuit of The Americas — Toyotas were second, third and fifth behind William Byron’s victorious Chevrolet.
That optimism from recent runs also has hopes riding high for another Virginia short track next weekend — Sunday, April 7 at Martinsville Speedway — and beyond.
“Denny said the next five weeks, there’s no reason why Toyota shouldn’t be in Victory Lane. So, make sure it’s one of ours,” Wallace said. “So I think that’s enough motivation to go out and get the job done. We learned a lot here in the fall, got behind on a little bit of strategy, but I think it’s a new opportunity for us. We’re really invested on what we need to do for this weekend and excited to get on track here.”
Toyota drivers occupy three of the top four places in the current Cup Series standings and five of the top 10. Atop that list is Martin Truex Jr., a three-time Richmond winner and the only driver who has completed every lap in the six races so far this season.
“It’s a good step, I guess, but we’d rather be winning. I’d give you one lead-lap finish back for a win,” Truex said after Saturday’s seventh-place qualifying run. “It’s been good, though. It’s been good and consistent. Our cars have been fast, we haven’t quite capitalized yet. Even last week (at COTA), we finished 10th and felt like we would have been better without some issues. So, it’s just been a grind-out year so far, but our cars have been fast. So we just need to capitalize and clean some things up and keep trying to find more speed.”
Editor’s note: Projection and text were updated after Saturday’s practice and qualifying:
The NASCAR Cup Series shifts back to short-track racing for the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway (7 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, Sirius XM NASCAR Radio), which aims to be another pulse-pounding spectacle in the 2024 season.
Racing Insights initially had Martin Truex Jr. poised to win, and that stance did not change after Saturday’s practice and qualifying. Truex, who took over sole possession of the top spot in the driver standings after last Sunday’s Circuit of The Americas race, has been consistent through six races with an average running position of 8.3 and an 8.8 average finish. Truex was in contention for the short-track win two weeks ago at Bristol Motor Speedway, challenging Denny Hamlin in the closing laps.
Richmond is an excellent opportunity for the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing driver to notch his first win of the season. He’s won three of the last nine races at the Virginia circuit and finished in the top 10 in nine of the last 10 races there. Joe Gibbs Racing has also won nine of the last 16 races at Richmond.
After Truex in the projections is Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney, who moved up a spot since our initial post. Pole winner Kyle Larson comes next, with Denny Hamlin and William Byron rounding out the top five. Joey Logano (up one spot), Christopher Bell, Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott and Chris Buescher complete the top 10.
There will be plenty to watch this Sunday as it will be the first Richmond race under the lights in the Next Gen era. Plus, there should be plenty of opportunities for teams to gain or lose spots on pit road, mixing up the field during the race.
OTHER DRIVERS TO WATCH
DENNY HAMLIN: With impressive career stats at Richmond (four wins, 18 top fives and 22 top 10s), Hamlin has firmly established himself as a powerhouse at his home track. Moreover, Hamlin already owns a short-track win this year (albeit with a different rules package) and is fourth on the list for most laps led at Richmond Raceway all-time (2,226).
KYLE LARSON: With his Hendrick Motorsports counterpart William Byron earning win No. 2 last week, Larson will want to respond with a second win of his own soon. In the Next Gen era, he owns the second-best average finish on short tracks (7.18), paired with two wins (Richmond and Martinsville 2023 spring races). Larson has scored the third-most points on short tracks over the last two seasons.
JOEY LOGANO: Richmond is poised as a bounce-back candidate for Logano, who has struggled in the early going. The two-time champ’s 223 laps led at Richmond in the Next Gen era is second only to Byron, and with a career average finish of 10.0 at Richmond, a top-10 result could be exactly what No. 22 needs at this stage of the season.
BRAD KESELOWSKI: Keselowski finished in the top 10 in both Richmond races last year and wheeled his way to a top-five finish at Bristol. In the last 10 races at Richmond, Keselowski has led the third-most laps (507), behind only Truex and Hamlin, with 102 of those laps led coming last fall.
TY GIBBS: Considering Gibbs’ impressive showing through six races, a win is coming in due time. Gibbs has led 195 laps this year, which is already 63% of his career laps led. While his Richmond stats might not jump off the page, it’s difficult to envision Gibbs not being in the mix, especially considering the speed the No. 54 crew has brought every week.
RACING INSIGHTS’ PROJECTIONS FOR THE TOYOTA OWNER’S 400 Racing Insights’ advanced statistical formula includes current track, current track type, recent performance, team data and pit-crew data to arrive at a projected winner and full race results.
RICHMOND, Va. — Bubba Pollard and Parker Kligerman spent a significant portion of Saturday’s ToyotaCare 250 jostling for position on Richmond Raceway’s 0.75-mile oval. At one point, Kligerman’s aggression involved enough contact to move Pollard out of his groove and pass him. “That’s just Parker Kligerman,” said spotter TJ Majors to what he presumed was an angered driver.
After some charged-up competition over the course of 250 laps, Kligerman approached Pollard on pit road. It was all smiles.
Kligerman told Pollard he loved racing with him. He apologized for that bump. Pollard accepted and noted how much fun he had making his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut.
In a race that featured one driver hurling a bumper cover at another after a crash, Pollard’s cordial demeanor was crucial not just to avoid confrontation with rivals on a short track. He needed that composure to patiently and methodically work his way through a 38-car field after starting 37th.
His accomplishing that feat to the tune of a sixth-place finish was one of many factors that made the 37-year-old Super Late Model racing legend’s Xfinity Series debut a success.
Pollard was the star of the show Saturday despite his status as a first-timer. The largest crowd of friends, family and media of any cluster on pit road before the race was the one congregating around the No. 88 Rheem Chevrolet. The announcement of his name over the facility’s speakers during driver intros elicited one of the bigger roars from the fans on hand.
Everybody was curious to see how a driver who’s won so many marquee races and championships on short tracks around the country would handle a national stage and an environment foreign to him — especially after he was fastest in practice, his first session in an Xfinity Series car. Adding to the intrigue was the fact that he followed that blazing session with a clunker in qualifying; he overdrove Turns 1-2 and botched his lap.
“I hope I made them proud,” Pollard said after the race when asked about his representation of the short-track racing community. Then he smiled. “I disappointed them in qualifying. I know some of them were laughing at me. I was laughing at myself.”
Bubba Pollard celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the ASA STARS National Tour ECMD 150 at North Wilkesboro Speedway on May 17, 2023. (Photo: Adam Fenwick/NASCAR)
The sentiment regarding Pollard’s Xfinity Series debut was that he earned it. He’s won many of the biggest Super Late Model races in the country: the Oxford 250 at Oxford Plains Speedway, the Rattler 250 at South Alabama Speedway, the Winter Showdown at Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway, the SpeedFest 200 at Cordele Motor Speedway, the Slinger Nationals at Slinger Super Speedway and the All American 400 at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, just to name a few. He’s also the 2014 ASA Southern Super Series champion.
His accolades are why Dale Earnhardt Jr. and sponsor Rheem made the effort to get Pollard in a JR Motorsports car at a track that suited his skills. The collaboration was a “you-love-to-see-it” moment for a racing community that appreciates when drivers like Pollard receive such an opportunity.
“I enjoy seeing the guys who have worked so so hard and have run so well over the years in Late Model racing get those chances,” said two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch. “I’m thankful of Junior for doing that. It takes money obviously to go to the race track. A lot of those guys use that money to go race their own cars and their programs and don’t spend it on a NASCAR program. I think for the betterment of our sport, it’s cool to see guys like that get a shot.”
Brad Keselowski, the 2012 Cup Series champion, echoed Busch’s sentiment: “I thought the opportunity was well earned. Dale has some privileges that not all of us enjoy with the ability to be able to do things like that, having partners that allow him to do that. He did it for me.
“Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. At the end of the day, I think it’s good for everybody.”
Josh Berry is another driver who’s benefitted from the connective tissue Earnhardt provides between late model racing and NASCAR’s national series. Berry drove Earnhardt’s Late Model Stock Car to the 2020 NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series national championship before he advanced to the Xfinity Series with JR Motorsports. Now, of course, he competes full-time in the Cup Series for Stewart-Haas Racing.
Their paths were and are different, but Berry is one of the few who can understand the difficult test placed before Pollard on Saturday. Berry was only somewhat surprised to see Pollard go fastest in his first Xfinity Series practice, and he knew Pollard would be bombarded with advice on how to navigate the situation.
In Berry’s mind, the most important thing for Bubba Pollard at Richmond was to just be Bubba Pollard.
“Hopefully he just enjoys it more than anything,” he said. “I think Bubba’s a great racer.”
(Photo: Tadd Haislop/NASCAR)
Toward the end of the first stage Saturday, Pollard finally felt comfortable in the Xfinity car. Toward the end of the second stage, he told his team he was starting to have fun.
A slow pit stop ahead of the final stage cost Pollard a few positions, but he spent the final 100 laps of the race doing what he does best: managing his tires on an abrasive surface and displaying patience. As he noted after the race, at Richmond, “slow is fast.”
As the race wound down with a long green-flag run, Pollard was blowing by his competition. Sixth was the highest position he had time to reach in a strung-out field.
That was more than enough for Pollard to be greeted by a hoard of media when he climbed out of his car.
“It means a lot,” Pollard said of the run. “Because there are a lot of great race car drivers out there that people never see. I’m thankful for the opportunity that Rheem and Dale Jr. gave me. It’s special to me and my family, just everyone. Hopefully we can do it again.”
Pollard as of now has no more NASCAR national series events on his schedule, but he’s hopeful such a debut might prompt a partner to give him another shot.
Regardless, he’ll always have the moments that made Saturday at Richmond one of the best days of his career, from posing with his family for pre-race photos to celebrating his finish with super fan TJ and everything in between. He did what Berry said he needed to do. More than anything, he enjoyed it.
He did all of it — Kligerman incident included — with a smile.
