Richmond Raceway is a welcome stop for drivers near the top of the points standings but offers meager hope to those straddling the playoff bubble.
Kevin Harvick charged forward from the 13th starting position to win this race last year, one week after breaking a 65-race winless streak at Michigan. For Harvick to make a similar comeback in his last Richmond race, he’ll have to beat spring winner Kyle Larson and a host of very competitive Toyota drivers.
What to expect at Richmond
With its 0.75-mile length and 14 degrees of banking in the turns, Richmond is one of the more unique short tracks on the Cup Series circuit. It’s also one of the oldest, having hosted its first race in 1953. New Hampshire, Gateway and Phoenix are good comparison tracks.
Richmond’s rough surface degrades tires quickly. The spring race featured lap time falloffs of 2-3 seconds over a 50-lap run. Large lap time falloff offers a big advantage to drivers who know how to manage their tires.
NASCAR allots nine sets of tires for the 300-mile race. Because Richmond often features long green-flag runs, expect green-flag pit stops. There will be plenty of opportunities to gain positions on pit road — but also ample places to make mistakes.
Richmond race rhythm has changed tempo in the last half dozen years. Once known for cautions (with a record of 16), Richmond hasn’t seen more than five natural cautions since fall 2019. The fall 2020 race had no natural cautions, just one competition caution and two stage-end cautions.
Past Winners
Ford and Chevy have each won three Richmond races since stage racing started in 2017. Toyota has six wins.
Of the drivers competing this weekend, Kyle Busch has the most wins (six) and the highest winning percentage (17.1%). Denny Hamlin and Harvick each have four wins. Hamlin has a win percentage of 12.1%. Harvick, who will make his 45th — and final — start at Richmond, has a 9.1% win rate.
Kyle Larson’s two wins in 17 races places him between Hamlin and Harvick in win percentage with an 11.8%.
Harvick, Larson, Hamlin and Truex are the last four Richmond winners.
The Richmond metric matrix
I weight recent performance highest, especially finishes in the Next Gen car. Career performance at a track is a very minor component. I keep it in there because some drivers just do better at some tracks, even when their equipment isn’t optimal.
This week’s metric matrix includes drivers’ average finishes for:
- Next Gen races
- The stage-racing era of 2017-2023
- Each drivers’ career
- All tracks less than a mile in 2023
- The comparison tracks (New Hampshire, Gateway and Phoenix) in 2023
No matter how I weight the different components, Harvick and Christopher Bell come out as the top two drivers. They are the only two drivers with a Next Gen average at Richmond better than 5.0.
Harvick’s 2.67 average finish in the three races run with the new car comes from a second-place finish, last year’s win and a fifth place this spring. He is the only driver to finish in the top five at all Next Gen Richmond races.
Bell has the second-best average finish at Richmond in the Next Gen car (4.00), with finishes of sixth, second and fourth. He has a career average finish at Richmond of 5.67, which is also the best of any driver in the field for Sunday’s race. If you include only races Bell ran for Joe Gibbs Racing, his average finish at Richmond is 3.80.
Harvick’s career average of 9.54 is worse than Bell’s; however, Harvick has run 39 more races than Bell. Harvick trumps Bell with four wins. Bell’s best finish at Richmond is second.
Bell and Harvick are also the only two drivers to have earned top-10 finishes in all three Next Gen car races.
Larson won the first Richmond race and Martinsville this year. He holds the third highest average finish in the Next Gen car at Richmond and has a 10.8 career average finish.
Martin Truex Jr. is strong across the board, except for his career average. As I mentioned earlier, I put minimal weight on that factor. Truex, the current points leader, has a lot of momentum this year. Toyota’s slow start with the Next Gen car dented his numbers, but the make seems to have caught up this year.
Joey Logano had a seventh at Richmond in the spring and a second at Martinsville, for an average of 4.5 at mile-and-under tracks in 2023. He has the seventh best average finish in the Next Gen car at Richmond with a 10.0 and is one of only two winning Ford drivers this year.
Practice and qualifying doesn’t correlate strongly with finishing position. It’s clear from looking at the consecutive laps times that the drivers with slower single laps are doing better jobs of saving their tires, as they have much less lap time fall-off than the drivers who posted fast single-lap times.
At this race last year, the top-five finishers qualified between third and 23rd. No one has won from the pole since Denny Hamlin in 2016. That doesn’t mean starting position isn’t a factor: Although only two of the last 12 races have been won from top-five starting positions, 10 of the 12 have been won from the top 15.
Busch, Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Harvick and Truex all qualified in the top 15.
Playoff contenders
Unfortunately, the drivers near the playoff cutoff don’t have much to look forward to this weekend. In addition to having to compete with the drivers discussed above, none of the playoff contenders have especially strong records at Richmond or similar tracks.
Chris Buescher, Bubba Wallace, and Michael McDowell currently occupy the final three playoff spots. A.J. Allmendinger, Daniel Suárez and Ty Gibbs are the next three drivers below the cutoff line.
Buescher has the best Next Gen average finish of the bunch at Richmond: 16.0. He finished third in this race last year, but 30th in the spring. Suárez has the second-best average Richmond finish in the Next Gen car at 19.3. For most of the playoff bubble drivers, focusing on earning as many points as possible, even at the cost of a win, might be the best strategy.
