However, all of that is literally in the rear view mirror as 16 drivers set their sights on the10 races that lie ahead in the championship portion of the season.
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The Joe Gibbs Racing driver has won at the raceway before and he is looking to get his third Richmond win of his career in the Sprint Cup Series.
Stewart is in his final Sprint Cup season before hoping to return to sprint-car racing, picking and choosing the races he will enter.
It’s hard not to view it as a reference to the incident from August of 2014, when sprint vehicle driver Kevin Ward was killed after being hit by Tony Stewart in upstate NY.
“I think the other cars that are out there, there’s so many … well-prepared cars, I think this is going to be a battle”, Gibbs said. The rest of the night it was a mix of one auto incidents that brought out yellow flags, however, a big crash at lap 363 took out seven cars, including Chris Buescher and Ryan Newman. Scott followed his Darlington crash (courtesy of Tony Stewart) with another wrecked racecar on Saturday night. That was the third time he had driven into me tonight.
The wreckage caused a stoppage of just over 20 minutes and sent Newman’s temperature soaring.
NEWMAN: A 15-point penalty for failing post-race inspection last weekend has hurt Newman’s chances to make the Chase. “It’s just disappointing that you’ve got somebody old like that’s retiring – should be retired the way he drives”.
Hot with anger, Newman held nothing back in showing his frustration with past team owner Stewart. “I don’t think there was any reason other than him just being bipolar and having anger issues”. Look it up on YouTube and everything else.
Ryan Newman had about as bad a week as a driver could get.
He had gotten into the top 10 though before tangling with Tony Stewart. “This night didn’t dictate it for him”. He would have needed Buescher to fall out of the top-30 in points in order for him to him to make it on points, or somehow manage to pull off a win to get in.
Back row: (L-R): Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch, Joey Logano, Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth. Last year’s Xfinity Series champion made the Chase by winning a rain-shortened race at Pocono, but he doesn’t want to settle for a “happy to be here” attitude.
Virginia native Denny Hamlin will start first at Richmond this Saturday night after claiming the Coors Light Pole on Friday night with a time of 22.069 seconds (122.344).
Still, JGR’s Hamlin refuses to call himself or any of his fellow Toyota drivers a favorite for the 10-race Chase. During that time he has scored two poles, two top five finishes and four top ten finishes and led 119 laps.
Hamlin took control of the race when his pit crew handed him the lead under caution on Lap 322.
He hasn’t hit career numbers this year in many categories, but his 241 laps led is his best to date. Ryan Blaney triggered the first on Lap 10 when the No. 21 made contact with Trevor Bayne and cut a tire. He was baffled because he thought he was clear of Bayne, but figured Bayne thought otherwise and neither driver would yield. It wasn’t good there, and then we qualified and it was just a handful in qualifying.
“We really got a good restart”, said Hamlin, who led seven times for 189 laps.
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