Five thoughts after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway …
1. Taking Stock
Richmond did little to change its reputation on Sunday, with its typically slow-evolving strategy being the primary feature of an Easter Sunday prime-time show. Even before the race, its fate as a track hosting two dates may have been sealed; in his column Monday, our Jordan Bianchi wrote the spring race is on the chopping block.
That’s no surprise for the place once known as the “Action Track.” During its peak stretch from 2001-09, Richmond saw nine or more cautions in 16 of its 17 races. Some of those races were sellouts, with more than 100,000 fans; the track built a towering grandstand in 2007 that increased its capacity to 112,000.
But it’s now been 13 races since Richmond reached nine cautions, and it has reached double-digit cautions only once in the last decade. Meanwhile, the track has been forced to remove grandstands (the capacity is now less than half of what it was at its peak) and even a holiday race did not appear to draw anything close to filling the remaining 50,000 or so seats.
Yet the first 30 laps of Sunday’s race also provided an incredible tease. With the track still damp from several hours of rain, NASCAR used wet weather tires for the first time in a Cup Series oval points race. It had previously used those tires on ovals in an exhibition race (North Wilkesboro’s All-Star Race last year) and a Truck Series race (Martinsville last fall) in addition to road courses; but never this.
Somehow, those first 30 laps were the best show of the night. The soft, fast-wearing treaded tires created passing and battles for the lead and three-wide racing. There it is! The Action Track is back!
Except then it wasn’t. Once the track dried and the usual tires were put back on, the racing reverted to how it always is at Richmond these days. It recalled a similar situation at North Wilkesboro last year, when the wet weather tires seemed to actually be better than the standard ones (or at least when combined with still-wet asphalt).
In recent years, no doubt in part due to the Next Gen car’s struggles, the rallying cry has gone from “More Short Tracks!” to “Meh, another short track?” And that’s fair, except when you consider races like Bristol two weeks ago or the first 30 laps on Sunday.
Is it really the track that’s the problem? Richmond’s layout hasn’t changed since its glory days; the cars and the tires have. We know the Next Gen’s short track package is a work in progress, with little improvement or optimism that aerodynamic changes could play a role in fixing the problems.
But the damp opening of Richmond’s event sure made it seem like the tires, if they got into enough of a sweet spot, could hold the key to unlocking so much of what ails NASCAR’s current short-track racing.
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2. Fastest Car Tracker
After the toughest call of the year last week at Circuit of the Americas, we have perhaps the easiest “no” so far. Martin Truex Jr. dominated the race, leading 228 laps, and was going to win until a caution came out with two laps to go.
Then it all unraveled for Truex in a matter of moments:
• Teammate Denny Hamlin’s pit crew had a faster stop, costing Truex the lead.
• Hamlin had control of the restart and appeared to jump it, although NASCAR ruled it as a good restart.
• Hamlin then drove Truex up the track to make sure he could retain his position, which made Truex lose his temper.
• Truex then collided with Kyle Larson, finished fourth and took out his anger on both Hamlin and Larson’s cars after the race.
Since 2016, Truex has led more than 100 laps at Richmond in eight races; he’s now won only two of those events.
“Led the whole race and some dumbass move brings out a caution coming to the white flag and ruins our whole night,” Truex told reporters afterward.
That about sums it up, doesn’t it? Still, a crazy streak continues in this space: No driver has had the fastest car twice this season in eight events.
Fastest Car Score: Fastest Car 4, Other Cars 4
Fastest Cars by Driver: Martin Truex Jr., 1, William Byron 1, Denny Hamlin 1, Christopher Bell 1, Kyle Larson 1, Todd Gilliland 1, Joey Logano 1, Ty Gibbs 1
Martin Truex Jr. had the clear fastest car Sunday in Richmond, but a late caution helped Denny Hamlin get out front and take the checkered flag. (Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
3. Q&A
Each week in this space, we’ll pose one question and attempt to answer one from the past.
Q: Should NASCAR have a challenge flag?
No sport is immune to officiating woes, and NASCAR had multiple instances of that on Sunday night. In a fantasy world, it sure would be nice if certain situations could be corrected with some sort of challenge from teams.
Of course, there’s a massive problem with that: NASCAR has no timeouts. So if a team was upset about the caution call for Kyle Busch that spoiled strategies in Stage 2, there’s no going back and reversing the call at that point.
But it would seem to be helpful in some instances. For example: Hamlin mashed the gas early, before the restart zone, as overtime began. Even though it was visually apparent on the TV replays and two in-car feeds have since come out that make it even more obvious, SMT data would have shown the exact moment Hamlin hit the throttle.
Just for a thought exercise, let’s say every team had one “challenge” in the regular season. Not every race, but once in the first 26 races (and maybe once in the playoffs for those who make it).
In this case, who would have challenged the Hamlin restart call? No, not Truex — his race was already over after Hamlin ran him high, and he finished fourth. But you know who could have benefited? Joey Logano, who finished second and has not won a Cup Series race in more than a year.
Think about it: Hamlin crosses the finish line first thanks to the jumped restart, Logano’s team radios to the scoring tower they want to use their challenge, NASCAR takes a closer look at it and reverses the result before Hamlin gets to victory lane. Logano is then declared the winner.
Now, maybe it doesn’t get overturned. After all, NASCAR’s Elton Sawyer told reporters of the restart: “We reviewed that. We looked at it. Obviously, the 11 was the control vehicle. It was awful close, but we deemed it to be a good restart.”
But on the NASCAR officials’ radio channel, there was no message that declared, “The restart is under review” as is the standard protocol when NASCAR wants to take a closer look at it. Perhaps a team-prompted protest would have allowed for that.
Even if it doesn’t change the result, fans and competitors alike may have felt better knowing the restart was scrutinized further — as would be the case for the other major league sports. Not everyone would agree with the call, but at least there would be a conversation about whether there was “indisputable evidence” to overturn it.
A: What else can we blame Ross Chastain for?
This is a funny question to reflect upon one year later. If you remember last spring’s Richmond race, Christopher Bell called Chastain a “wrecking ball” and blamed him for an incident involving Bell and William Byron, even though Chastain didn’t make contact with anyone.
At the time, Chastain had been getting blamed frequently — Trackhouse Racing teammate Daniel Suárez was mad at him after COTA, and Chastain was accused of spinning Kevin Harvick at Atlanta (replays showed the air caused that wreck, not contact).
We wondered at the time if Chastain was getting a bad rap. But not too long after Richmond, Chastain was involved in some incidents he certainly could be blamed for — Dover and Darlington, most notably.
Then, of course, he practically vanished from the radar for awhile — aside from winning Nashville and popping up to anger Ryan Blaney en route to a victory in the season finale.
Chastain still hasn’t been the lightning rod he was at this time last year, but he also hasn’t had the same speed. The 31-year-old has six straight top-15 finishes, but only one top-five (a fourth-place finish at Las Vegas) and ranks ninth in the standings; a year ago, he was leading the Cup Series point standings after Richmond.
He remains the same guy, though; a Fox Sports feature recently had drivers name him as the hardest to pass on the track, and he agreed. Clearly, it won’t be long before someone blames Chastain for something again.
4. NASquirks
In yet another never-before-seen moment in NASCAR, Joey Gase on Saturday ripped off his rear bumper and threw it at Dawson Cram’s car following a crash in the Richmond Xfinity Series race.
The video went viral and was picked up by all sorts of non-racing outlets. As of Monday morning, the video posted to the @NASCAR_Xfinity X account has been viewed more than one million times.
Frustration can manifest in a lot of different ways 👀. pic.twitter.com/Wt4dHVS6tn
— NASCAR Xfinity (@NASCAR_Xfinity) March 30, 2024
It’s all strange, because Gase and Cram were driving two lapped cars and would have otherwise never been heard from — potentially even by the people watching the race at home. Cram got his best finish of the season on Saturday (25th) and is 34th in the Xfinity point standings; Gase, who is running a partial schedule, has a best finish of 29th this season.
And yet, for nearly 24 hours this weekend, Google Trends data shows more people were searching for the term “Joey Gase” than “Chase Elliott” (or any other NASCAR driver, for that matter).
All it took was for Gase to tear off the bumper of his car and chuck it like a javelin. Go figure.
5. Five at No. 5
Our mini power rankings after Race No. 8/38 (including exhibitions):
1. Martin Truex Jr. (last week: 3): The narrative would be completely different today had Truex finished off a dominating performance. It would have been his first victory since July — before a disastrous stretch in the playoffs — and put an exclamation mark on leading the point standings early this season.
2. Kyle Larson (last week: 2): He lost control of the race due to the untimely caution call in Stage 2 and later had a bad set of tires, but still finished third even after his late spin.
3. Denny Hamlin (last week: not ranked): Hamlin has been the driver this season who keeps popping into the rankings, then getting cold enough to fall out. We just removed him last week after COTA; now he’s back in again following Win No. 2 (three, if you count the Clash).
4. Ty Gibbs (last week: 1): This wasn’t the night we expected from Gibbs (finished 16th), who didn’t run as well as anticipated even aside from his speeding penalty. Martinsville should be better.
5. William Byron (last week: 4): After crew chief Rudy Fugle vowed to show improvement at Richmond and Martinsville and win one of those two races, Byron had a quiet night in finishing seventh (with an average running position of 10.5).
Dropped out: Christopher Bell.
GO DEEPER
Richmond Raceway is part of NASCAR roots, but it’s time to drop a race
(Top photo of Joey Gase throwing his bumper at Dawson Cram’s car on Saturday: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
