Denny Hamlin has captured the pole for Saturday night’s Sprint Cup race at Richmond International Raceway. With three victories and 2,009 points, Hamlin is the No. 3 seed, followed by Harvick, Carl Edwards, Truex, Matt Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson, Joey Logano, Larson, Stewart, Kurt Busch, Buescher, Elliott, Dillon and McMurray. “All I care about now is getting ready for (the first Chase race in) Chicago and running through Sunday in Chicago”. He can play the role of spoiler in the final 10 races, however, and should run consistently well throughout the remainder of the season. Sep.
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Kyle Larson, Chris Buescher, Austin Dillon and Chase Elliott will all be making their first Chase appearances when the playoffs open next weekend at Chicagoland Speedway.
He goes into tonight’s race with an 11-point lead over David Ragan for 30th in the standings.
Newman and Stewart made contact just two laps after Newman re-entered the top 10 after going a lap down earlier in the race.
So, after weeks of scrapping around the edges postseason eligibility, Buescher can now concentrate on winning a championship in his first season on NASCAR’s biggest stage.
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It’s put him in position to strategize and race with a championship berth on the line, which he did past year in the Xfinity Series for Roush Fenway Racing. “When you start changing the vibe, things get hard”.
“We just kind of missed it all through practice”.
“We want to move through the Chase, and then we can reevaluate from there”. “We’ll keep fighting like we always do”. He also scored a career-high 15 top-five finishes that season.
Kyle Larson pitted for fresh tires under the yellow and streaked from 12th to second on the two-lap overtime run, but the driver of the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet didn’t have time to catch Hamlin who crossed the finish line with a margin of.609 seconds. Newman, who used to drive for Tony Stewart at Stewart Haas Racing, was not happy after the crash and he unloaded on his old boss who he believed ended his Chase hopes.
“It’s unfortunate, ” Newman said of Stewart. Those four will battle it out for the championship on November 20 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Kahne ultimately fell back and finished sixth.
The highlight of the long evening was a no-holds-barred interview from Ryan Newman after he was eliminated from Chase contention when his fellow Hoosier, ?
McMURRAY: After making the Chase for the first time a year ago, McMurray has been on the bubble this entire season.
McMurray was unable to make the second round previous year, his first time in the Chase. “Obviously, you would rather have won your way in and have a win at this point, but I would much rather win in these last 10 races if I had a choice”.
“Said the victor, “(Toward the end) I thought we should come in for tires but (crew chief) Mike Wheeler knew we had a good enough buffer.
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“We really got a good restart”, said Hamlin, who led seven times for 189 laps. Busch dominated and won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Richmond on Friday night, leading 197 of 250 laps. Especially, with (Kahne) up there near the end, but we were racing (McMurray) all night, we did our job, we stayed in that buffer. “I have been able to win here in the past and I look forward to the challenge”.
