Frontstretch Newsletter: Aug. 12, 2022
Volume XVI, Edition CXXXV |
What to Watch: Aug. 12-14 |
- NASCAR Cup teams are scheduled to pull in at Richmond Raceway tomorrow morning. They will practice starting at 5 p.m. ET with qualifying following immediately afterwards. These
sessions will both air on USA. - NASCAR Camping World Truck Series teams will have a one-day show at Richmond Raceway on Saturday. Teams will park and go through inspection early in the morning. Practice is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET, followed up by qualifying. Both sessions will air on FOX
Sports 1. Coverage of the Worldwide Express 250 will start with NASCAR RaceDay - CWTS Edition at 7 p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1. Race coverage will follow at 8 p.m. - The World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series is still at Knoxville Raceway for the NOS Energy Drink Knoxville Nationals. The final night of preliminaries, the FVP Hard Knox Preliminary Night, is tonight starting at 7:45 p.m. ET on DirtVision. Saturday night brings the big bucks into play. Those in the top 16 in the points over the past two nights won't have to worry about racing until the A-main, although they will still get hot laps. Saturday night's action will also start at 7:45 p.m. ET. The DirtVision pay-per-view can be purchased per night, or for the whole weekend. It is only included in a subscription if you have the full season platinum-level Fast Pass
subscription. FOLLOW THE FRONTSTRETCH THIS WEEKEND AT RICHMOND THROUGH OUR COLLEAGUES: Luken Glover Also, don't forget to follow our Twitter page, @Frontstretch as well
for updates on Richmond! |
Around the World in Motorsports: Aug. 11 |
- Richmond Raceway hosted Bubba's Block Party Thursday, a whole shindig with live pit stops, sim racing and live performances, including Wale. The idea
behind it was to help introduce NASCAR to a new audience in addition to the existing one. Our own Michael Massie was there to take in the festivities. In the above video, he talks to some of the pit crew members from Rev Racing that participated in the live pit stop demonstrations. - Thursday saw Kimi Raikkonen and Mike Rockenfeller turn in laps on VIRginia International Raceway's 3.27-mile circuit in Action Express Racing's Next Gen car in anticipation of both drivers making their Cup debuts at Watkins Glen. - Shark Racing's Jacob Allen emerged victorious in Thursday night's preliminary A-main at Knoxville Raceway as part of the NOS Energy Drink Knoxville Nationals. So far, it has been an excellent week for the small Shark Racing organization as they have swept the A-mains to this point. Brad Sweet was second, then Carson Macedo, Austin McCarl and Kyle Larson. With that, the points are complete and 16 drivers are locked into Saturday night's A-main. Local racer Austin McCarl will start on the pole for the 50-lap race with Tyler Courtney alongside. Donny Schatz starts third, then David Gravel, Macedo and Larson. Other drivers that have locked into the
A-main include Sweet, Brent Marks, Daryn Pittman, Jacob Allen, Parker Price-Miller, Justin Sanders, Buddy Kofoid, Tasker Phillips and Aaron Reutzel. |
Frontstretch Folio: Federated Auto Parts 400 by Phil Allaway
This weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series returns to Virginia for their second visit of the year to Richmond Raceway. This will be a daytime race, meaning that this will be the first season since 1990 without a scheduled night race at Richmond. Coverage of the Federated Auto Parts 400
starts with Countdown to Green at 2 p.m. ET on USA. The race broadcast starts at 3 p.m. with the green flag scheduled to drop around 3:20 p.m. and can be heard on MRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Channel 90).
Records and facts Last year's Federated Auto Parts 400 Salute to First Responders was quite clean, but not as clean as the 2020 race, which had no natural cautions for 400 laps. The race was dominated by Joe Gibbs Racing, whose drivers led 326 of 400 laps. The last 146 laps were run under green after a crash involving Bubba
Wallace. Denny Hamlin dominated much of the event, leading a race-high 197 laps. However, Martin Truex Jr. jumped over Hamlin on the final round of pit stops and held on to win. Truex won by 1.417 seconds over Hamlin. Christopher Bell was third, then Chase Elliott and Joey Logano. All-time, Richard Petty is the winningest driver at Richmond with 13 career victories. Of those 13, three came on the dirt while the other 10 came on the old, .542-mile paved oval prior to the track's 1988 renovation. Petty's count also includes seven in a row from 1970-73, a NASCAR
record for this track. Bobby Allison is second with seven wins while Rusty Wallace, Kyle Busch, Darrell Waltrip and David Pearson have six apiece. Wallace and Kyle Busch's wins have all come on the present three-quarters of a mile configuration. Among active drivers, Kyle Busch is the winningest driver at Richmond with six triumphs. Denny Hamlin, who won back in April, has four victories, while Truex and Kevin Harvick have three wins
apiece. Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano have two each. Track Facts
Track / Race Length: .750-mile D-shaped oval, 400 laps (300 miles)
Banking: 14 degrees
Frontstretch: 1,290 feet, banked 8 degrees Backstretch: 860 feet, banked 5 degrees Grandstand Seating: 59,000
Pit Road Speed: 40 mph
Pace Car Speed: 45 mph
Opened: 1946 (first Cup race in 1953) Website: http://www.richmondraceway.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richmond.raceway Twitter: http://twitter.com/RichmondRaceway Pre-Race Sessions: Practice: Saturday, Aug. 13, 5:05 - 5:45 p.m. ET on USA Qualifying: Saturday, Aug. 13, 5:55 p.m.
on USA Say
What?! "I wasn’t really surprised [with how the spring race played out]. From what I’ve seen since I’ve been around Richmond is that it has been a high fall off track. In the Xfinity Series, my spotter Lorin Rainer in 2016, he told me going into the weekend that if I would just listen to him, that I would run good. We had an 80 lap run to the finish and with 20 to go we went from 20th to seventh in Johnny Davis’ car.
It was because we saved our rear tires. It’s the same thing this year, I burned off my front tires because we had such short runs in the spring for most of the race, and then all of the sudden we had a long run at the end and I wasn’t prepared as a driver for that. I put my front tires past the limit and made speed early but it really cost me when there was a really long run at the end." - Ross
Chastain "Richmond has been [a] great place for me over the years. I’m not sure exactly why, but it started off rough for me, not running well there in the Truck Series in 2001, but I got back there in an Xfinity car in 2003 and 2004 and everything went really well ever since then. We’ve had a lot of top
fives, a lot of top two finishes and wins there, so excited about our prospects of going back there this weekend and running well again. I thought we had a legitimate shot of a top-three finish there in the spring and maybe a chance at a win, but would love to be able to better our result from the spring with our M&M’s Camry. "Richmond is getting a little trickier, it seems like, just with the asphalt kind of getting older and the way the cars are. The consensus at Richmond is, of course, just trying to
get your car to turn, but also having really good forward bite. You have to be able to get off the corners at Richmond. All of it correlates. Everything you want as a racecar driver, you’ve got to have most all of it and, if you don’t, then you better hope you have more forward bite than the rest of them. That’s sort of the equation of Richmond. It’s a fun place to race. It’s really cool. As a driver, you wish it could widen out and give you more options of being able to run around in different
grooves, but it hasn’t shown us that the last couple of years. We’re hoping to get our M&M’S Camry another win there." - Kyle Busch "I’m not really sure. I just felt like we unloaded pretty close to what we needed, where in the past we were so off and I didn’t really know what I needed on a short track. But that was kind of what we saw at Phoenix, too. This car has changed a lot of things and it’s hard to really pinpoint what the change is. I think a lot of it is how the NextGen car drives, and it just seems to suit what we do on short
tracks." - Chase Briscoe "Richmond is a really fun racetrack and I’m looking forward to trying to learn more in this new car each week. We had so much speed last weekend in Michigan, so everyone on this No. 16 team is
super optimistic going into the weekend. It will be a challenge, since this is the first racetrack that I will really have to use the brake pedal on in the Cup series and my first short track. Having a win at Richmond in the Xfinity series also brings some confidence. That, plus the speed we have shown lately, makes me really eager for the weekend." - Noah
Gragson Phil Allaway is the Newsletter Manager for Frontstretch. He can be reached via e-mail at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com. Photo is courtesy of Nigel Kinrade
Photography.
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