{"id":42342,"date":"2023-04-01T16:59:37","date_gmt":"2023-04-01T21:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=42342"},"modified":"2023-04-01T16:59:37","modified_gmt":"2023-04-01T21:59:37","slug":"nascar-weekend-notebook-richmond-raceway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/01\/nascar-weekend-notebook-richmond-raceway\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Weekend Notebook: Richmond Raceway"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain<\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR\u2019s Cup Series and Xfinity Series practice and qualifying sessions were cancelled Saturday morning at Richmond (Va.) Raceway because of poor weather. The starting lineups were then set based upon the rule book.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Leland Honeyman, driver of the #45 Big Green Egg Chevrolet, and Brett Moffitt, driver of the #25 AM Technical Solutions Ford, pit during the NASCAR Xfinity Series ToyotaCare 250 at Richmond Raceway on April 01, 2023 in Richmond, Virginia. (Photo by David Jensen\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Current NASCAR Cup Series championship leader Alex Bowman will start Sunday\u2019s Toyota Owners 400 (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) from pole position in the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet with Kyle Busch completing the front row in the No. 8 Richard Childress Chevy. Defending race winner \u2013 and four-time Richmond winner – Denny Hamlin will start his No.11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota from 11th on the grid.<\/p>\n

There have been five different winners in the last five NASCAR Cup Series races at the 0.75-mile Richmond track.<\/p>\n

Justin Allgaier \u2013 a two-time Richmond winner \u2013 will start Saturday afternoon\u2019s NASCAR Xfinity Series race, the ToyotaCare 250 (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) from pole position in the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, alongside Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s rookie Sammy Smith in the No. 18 JGR Toyota.<\/p>\n

JR Motorsport\u2019s Sam Mayer and Kaulig Racing\u2019s Daniel Hemric \u2013 who will start their Chevys third and fifth, respectively \u2013 join Allgaier and Smith being eligible for the first $100,000 prize from the Dash 4 Cash incentive program this week at Richmond. The top finishing driver among these four (they qualified for the bonus last week at Circuit of the Americas) takes the big check. The top four finishing fulltime NASCAR Xfinity Series drivers at Richmond will then be eligible for the next $100,000 at Martinsville (Va.) Raceway in two weeks.<\/p>\n

Ty Gibbs is the defending Richmond race winner, but he is not competing Saturday.<\/p>\n

NASCAR PARITY<\/b><\/p>\n

Two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and Richmond Raceway\u2019s winningest active driver, Kyle Busch (six victories) says the overall parity in the sport since the introduction of the Next Gen race car last year is not a bad thing. There have been five different winners in the opening six races of 2023 with Hendrick Motorsports\u2019 William Byron (Las Vegas and Phoenix) the only repeat winner.<\/p>\n

\u201cParity is always good, right,\u2019\u2019 said Busch, who drives the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet and scored a victory at California\u2019s Auto Club Speedway in February.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year we had 19 different winners. Every manufacturer, obviously. I think the guy who won the most races, it was four or five that they won and it\u2019s been a while since it\u2019s been that few races won by the top winner of the series. Typically, you see seven, eight, nine 10 race wins.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just showed good parity and I feel like a lot of that has more to do with this Next Gen race car than it does the manufacturers, but they are all working hard and doing best we can with what we continue to build on our program with RCR and Chevrolet and hopefully keep heading in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

When comparing the NASCAR Cup Series competitiveness to other series, such as Formula One, Busch grinned.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at F1 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s much parity,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u201cSo you could argue, that you turn on NASCAR races and you kind of don\u2019t know whose going to win each week. You know who\u2019s good at particular race tracks but sometimes those guys, like myself, only win one race a year so they\u2019re not winning every single week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere you turn on an F1 race and you\u2019re just wondering if anybody\u2019s going to beat Red Bull right now. It was Mercedes. So, there\u2019s obviously a distinct difference between our two series.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

MENDING FENCES<\/b><\/p>\n

The Circuit of the Americas road course race last weekend provided a typically thrilling finish with Tyler Reddick scoring his first victory of the year in triple overtime \u2013 his first win in his new tenure with 23XI Racing. But there was also a lot of action on track well behind the race for the checkered flag. Bent fenders, hot tempers and hurt feelings characterized the COTA outcome and it will be interesting to see how that reconciles as the series moves to the .75-mile Richmond track, where tight racing is also the norm.<\/p>\n

Trackhouse Racing\u2019s Daniel Su\u00e1rez even received a $50,000 fine this week for purposely running into his teammate Ross Chastain on the cool down lap heading to pit road.<\/p>\n

Team Penke’s Ryan Blaney acknowledged this week that high emotion is nothing new. It\u2019s just a matter of how you handle it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter, if you\u2019re a teammate, worst enemies, best friends, you do this enough, you\u2019re gonna get into it with everybody intentional or not and those things just happen,\u2019\u2019 said Blaney, who won the Richmond pole position in this spring race last year and has top-10 finishes in his last three Richmond starts in the No. 12 Team Penske Ford.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe teammate side, Joey [Logano] and I have had a couple run-ins over the years, me and Austin [Cindric], and you get over that stuff. You talk about it. You get over it and you move on from it. Those things you have do, I think fairly quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is still probably something in the back of your head, but, at the same time, you\u2019re a team and if you\u2019ve got two teammates pissed off at each other, that doesn\u2019t help the camaraderie of the whole organization. So, I\u2019m sure those guys Su\u00e1rez and Chastain] got over it, but I don\u2019t know their business. It\u2019s important to try to set things straight when you and a teammate have a run-in because you can\u2019t be walking around the race shop and crew members  and have them being mad at each other too.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain NASCAR Wire Service NASCAR\u2019s Cup Series and Xfinity Series practice and qualifying sessions were cancelled Saturday morning at Richmond (Va.) Raceway because of poor weather. The starting lineups were then set based upon the rule book. Current NASCAR Cup Series championship leader Alex Bowman will start Sunday\u2019s Toyota Owners 400 (3:30 p.m. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":42349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[16,486],"class_list":["post-42342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-richmond-raceway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/GettyImages-1478816645-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-b0W","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42342"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42356,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42342\/revisions\/42356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}