These… are the must-win drivers. He also won for the eighth time in 14 starts this season, and the sixth time in his career at Richmond.
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Among winless drivers, Chase Elliott and Austin Dillon are in slightly better shape pointswise than McMurray. He was also running in the top 10 at Bristol before sustaining damage to his auto that hurt his finishing position. Unable to close in on Matt Kenseth, Almirola settled for fourth, missing out on his second-straight Chase appearance.
Buescher is 30th in the standings, 11 points ahead of David Ragan.
Ryan Blaney is in a similar category. Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced last week that he will not return to racing this season due concussion-like symptoms, but plans to be back in his No. 88 Chevrolet for the 2017 season-opening Daytona 500. Look for Kevin Harvick and the #4 team to strongly answer those questions Saturday night at Richmond and get their Chase off on a strong footing. While crew chief Luke Lambert was socked with a $25,000 fine, the biggest hit came to driver Ryan Newman, who was docked 15 championship points.
On the second lap of an early restart, Buescher’s No. 34 Ford of Front Row Motorsports lost its sideforce and slid up the track, hitting Earnhardt’s auto.
Entering the 2013 event at Richmond, Newman sat outside the Chase and needed to bring the points to the table. He will need a big finish, and that also goes for Kahne as well. He ended up finishing third, making the Chase that night.
Both incidents, though different in tactics, showed what he’ll do in these, the later years of his NASCAR tenure. Kahne did win at Richmond back in 2005 and has had two top-10s in his past three starts at the track. A few surprise winners this season have mixed up the championship contending field already and Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400 will leave some teams excited about beginning their shot at the series championship while delivering a knockout blow to the rest.
Can Anybody Point Their Way Into the XFINITY Chase? “I remember the first time I was here, I think I knocked every wall down”.
If he has a bad finish at Richmond, there could be four wild cards in the Chase.
Sitting 11th is Blake Koch, who runs 22 points above the cutoff zone in his first season with Kaulig Racing. It was Strong’s first career Pro Stock win in only his ninth race in the class. Points – Top Fuel: 1. It was a huge amount of pressure just to make it in.
Armstrong will need some luck come Friday night at Richmond.
“I can still feel Coach Gibbs’ (team owner Joe Gibbs) presence here from last time after the race”, Edwards joked. John Hunter Nemechek used an aggressive move on Cole Custer to nudge Custer from the lead, and the two drivers raced door-to-door through the grass to the finish line. Gordon has run 93.4 percent of his laps inside the Top 15 over the past two seasons at RIR, so he is still a force to be reckoned with. We can see it now.
Chase Elliott: He’s in a good position. “We were running away from everybody else”.
Newman, who hasn’t won a race since Indianapolis in 2013, has advanced to the Chase in each of the past three seasons. “I’ve done everything I can as a driver to prepare myself”. “It won’t be an easy walk from where we are at right now, but we’ll be able to work our way up”.
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The defending Sprint Cup Series champion led 197 of 250 laps en route to his 84th victory in the series. In spring 2015, Kurt Busch led 291 laps while Brad Keselowski led 383 laps to Victory Lane in 2014. “Have great pit stops”. This is not one of my better tracks, but we made progress in practice and are definitely better than we were here in the spring.
