By Aaron Bearden

A breakdown of Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway,  the seventh race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season. 

Main Takeaway

For the first time in 15 races, the NASCAR Cup Series field saw overtime in Sunday’s trip to Richmond Raceway.

Those final laps wound up being critical for Joe Gibbs Racing – particularly on pit road.

Martin Truex Jr. was holding a charging Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin at bay in the closing stages of the Toyota Owners 400, inching toward his first win of the year after flaming out of the 2023 playoffs. But contact in the battle for fourth between Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson elicited a yellow flag with just two laps remaining.

That brought the field to pit road, which proved critical to the outcome of the race. Hamlin entered his stall in third, but No. 11 crew gave the three-time Daytona 500 winner a rapid 8.99-second stop that lifted him into the race lead. 

On the ensuing restart, Hamlin appeared to fire off before the restart zone. The quick jump gave him an edge on Truex, which helped him clear the 2017 Cup champ off of Turn 2 after he washed up the track to stall out his run.

“He jumped the start, then just used me up in Turn 1,” a frustrated Truex said afterward. “(It) definitely sucks.”

NASCAR reviewed the restart. But in the end Elton Sawyer, vice president of competition, said the sanctioning body felt it was legal. Hamlin went on to claim a win he credited entirely to his team.

“This is a team win for sure,” Hamlin said. “This trophy needs to go to each one of these pit crew members. They just did an amazing job. They’ve been killing it all year.

Asked about the restart, Hamlin said he’d “went right at” the start of the restart zone.

“I did that because I saw those guys rolling to me,” he said. “The 22 was laying back. The 19 was rolling a couple miles an hour quicker than I was. I wasn’t going to let them have an advantage that my team earned on pit road.”

Truex’s race ending went from bad to worse over the final lap. Logano got under him heading into Turn 1, Kyle Larson followed off of Turn 2 and the pair ended up making contact multiple times through the finish line and into Turn 1 on the cooldown lap.

Truex ended up fourth after getting beat to the line by Larson. He gave Hamlin a few stiff shots to the rear bumper on the cool down lap to voice his frustration.

“(Larson) drove into the side of me in (Turns) 1 and 2,” Truex said. “I got a little loose down the backstretch – I don’t know if my left rear was going down or what – and I kind of slammed into him. No big deal.”

There were no hard feelings on Larson’s end. He called Truex “probably the most respected guy in the garage area” and figured he was just angry over the lost battle with Hamlin.

“I think he was just mad,” Larson said. “He was mad that the 11 used him up on the restart. That’s probably where it really started from. Then the 22 got to his inside. I got in behind the 22. He just turned left across my nose, had me up on the apron off of two. I don’t know if he thought I just piled it in there. Then he door-slammed me down the middle of the backstretch. I figured in three and four I was going to use him up a little bit.

“I think he is more mad at Denny, but I was the closest one to take his anger out on. I haven’t seen a replay either. I’m guessing the replay looks the way I kind of saw one and two, and then he’ll realize that and probably be all right.”

With Sunday’s win, Hamlin’s established himself as a driver to beat on short tracks. The Virginian has now won three races in 2024 – the year-opening Busch Light Clash, two weeks ago at Bristol Motor Speedway and Sunday at Richmond. All tracks under a mile in length.

The first two could primarily be attributed to Hamlin. But this time around it’s his pit crew that delivered when it counted most.

Good, Bad and Ugly

Good: Wet weather tire delivers early action

For the past two years, NASCAR had spent Easter Sunday competing on dirt. This time around, the series ran in the wet.

After intermittent storms left the racing surface damp at the scheduled start time, NASCAR elected to get things rolling and have its teams start on treaded tires for the opening 30 laps. It was the second time the Cup Series has done so on a short track, but the first in an official points race. NASCAR’s damp tire short track debut came last year in the All-Star Race’s qualifying heats at North Wilkesboro Speedway.

The ensuing run was intriguing, with many position changes as drivers worked to figure the tire out. NASCAR then threw a competition caution and stopped counting laps to allow teams to change to slicks in complete non-competitive pit stops. Teams retained their positions entering pit road.

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, said the competition caution and stops were done non-competitively in the name of safety.

“On the short ovals, we’re not at a place where we’re comfortable with (live stops)” Sawyer told the assembled media at Richmond. “We’re looking out for the safety.”

The lengthy caution and non-competitive stops weren’t a fan favorite. But the run that preceded the stops was intriguing. With the nerves of competing having faded, race-winning crew chief Chris Gabehart declared the run a success.

“It was nerve-wracking for all of us because we had never done it before,” Gabehart admitted. “There was points and a lot on the line. You’ve got to watch the radar. NASCAR is trying to communicate to the teams when are we going to go, how is all this going to work. They told us it would be situational, whether it would be competitive pit stops or not. At lot of logistics that has to be covered for the teams and NASCAR.

“Honestly, I thought it went seamless. I thought it did exactly what they wanted it to do.”

NASCAR agreed, with Sawyer saying “mission accomplished” afterward.

“First of all, credit to (NASCAR CEO) Jim France,” Sawyer said. “He tasked Goodyear and the R&D Center to come up with a tire to 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.”

There are still kinks to work out and the amount of situations where wet weather tires can be utilized is small. It’s essentially only feasible at road courses and short, flat ovals, where it has rained and is damp but is no longer raining. But when the circumstances have provided opportunity, NASCAR’s early damp weather trials have been a success.

“People immediately will ask, ‘Well, surely you can do this everywhere?’ You cannot do it any track that we run faster than this one,” Hamlin said.

“It was just uncomfortable enough entering done one at those speeds with it being wet. It was executed just how they wanted. I thought the drivers did it perfectly.”

Bad: Karma comes for Bubba Wallace

While the media assembled talked with Larson on pit road, a familiar figure approached him from the side. Wallace came up to the Californian and grabbed him by the shoulders – and apologized.

“That wasn’t intentional, I hope you know that,” Wallace told a smiling Larson. “I got loose and (over)corrected into you.

“It’s all good,” Larson said, joking that “it all worked out for me.”

The 2021 Cup champ wasn’t joking. He’d come out on the wrong end of the pair’s contact with two to go, spinning into the infield grass to bring out the race’s final yellow.

It’d be natural to assume Wallace came out better off, and Larson worse, from the incident. But in a unique twist, the caution ended up benefitting Larson and hampering Wallace’s run.

Larson lost little ground as he recovered from the accident due to the spread-out nature of Richmond’s late green-flag run. He entered the final restart fourth, followed Logano under Truex off of Turn 2 on the final lap and beat him to the checkered flag to score a third-place finish.

The Californian was actually more worried about Truex than Wallace afterward. The duo had clobbered into each other heading into Turn 1 on the cooldown lap after a contact-filled fight to the line.

Wallace emerged from the crash in fourth. But a slow pit stop mired him deep in the field for overtime. The two-time Cup winner could only rally to 13th in the final two-lap sprint.

The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him.

“Karma’s a ****ing ***** and it caught up to me,” Wallace joked with Larson. “I’m seriously sorry about it, brother. Whatever’s coming my way, I expect it.”

Ugly: That was a caution?

Remember few weeks ago at Bristol, when Carson Hocevar slowed tremendously on the racing line and didn’t elicit a caution flag? What about the second race of the year at Atlanta Motor Speedway, when a genuine crash didn’t bring out a yellow?

NASCAR flipped the script Sunday, throwing a caution for a mundane wall hit from Kyle Busch.

“When he went down into (Turn) 3 it looked like he had either a right front down or maybe a brake failure,” Sawyer said of the decision to throw the yellow for Busch’s incident.

Whether justified or not, the caution came at an inopportune time in Stage 2, effectively killing all strategy being played in the race. Given that strategy is one of Richmond’s key selling points, seeing it scuppered hampered what could have been a more intriguing race.

Notes

  • Josh Berry and Daniel Suarez had a conversation on pit road after the conclusion of Sunday’s race.

  • Ty Dillon made his first Cup start of the year for Kaulig Racing. The night was nothing special, ending in 29th – but Dillon did beat teammate Daniel Hemric (30th).
  • How dull have things been for NASCAR’s most popular driver? Chase Elliott came home fifth at Richmond to score his first top-five since the 2023 regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway. Fans of the No. 9 team will hope it’s a sign of things to come.
  • I’ll concede to Racing America‘s Joseph Srigley for this nugget:

  • Credit to Tyler Reddick. Richmond isn’t his track – he has no DNFs at the facility but had never finished better than 11th entering Sunday. But the Californian managed to squeak out his first top-10 at the facility with a 10th-place run. Baby steps.
  • Things don’t seem to be going well for Reddick’s old teammate, Austin Dillon.

Race Results

  1. Denny Hamlin
  2. Joey Logano
  3. Kyle Larson
  4. Martin Truex Jr.
  5. Chase Elliott
  6. Christopher Bell
  7. William Byron
  8. Brad Keselowski
  9. Chris Buescher
  10. Tyler Reddick
  11. Josh Berry
  12. Noah Gragson
  13. Bubba Wallace
  14. Erik Jones
  15. Ross Chastain
  16. Ty Gibbs
  17. Alex Bowman
  18. Chase Briscoe
  19. Ryan Blaney
  20. Kyle Busch
  21. Todd Gilliland
  22. Daniel Suarez
  23. Austin Cindric
  24. Austin Dillon
  25. John Hunter Nemechek
  26. Michael McDowell
  27. Carson Hocevar
  28. Ryan Preece
  29. Ty Dillon
  30. Daniel Hemric
  31. Kaz Grala
  32. Justin Haley
  33. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  34. Harrison Burton
  35. Zane Smith
  36. Corey LaJoie

Stage 1

  1. Kyle Larson
  2. Bubba Wallace
  3. Alex Bowman
  4. Martin Truex Jr.
  5. Joey Logano
  6. Todd Gilliland
  7. Chase Elliott
  8. Ross Chastain
  9. Josh Berry
  10. Ryan Preece

Stage 2

  1. Martin Truex Jr.
  2. Josh Berry
  3. Joey Logano
  4. Kyle Larson
  5. Denny Hamlin
  6. Christopher Bell
  7. Chris Buescher
  8. Bubba Wallace
  9. William Byron
  10. Tyler Reddick

To see the current playoff picture, check out our weekly Playoff Points update. 

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(Top photo credit: Nigel Kinrade Photography)

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NASCAR Cup Series Richmond Raceway