Larson Gets First Win of the Season in Richmond

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I had a chance to take a look at this past Sunday’s race at Richmond and I have to say I thought it was probably the best Richmond race in the last 15 years. Action throughout the field, comers and goers all day, tire wear all day long. What a good show as William Byron would win stage one and Denny Hamlin would take stage Two. Stage three, in my opinion, was the best part of the race with lots of different strategies, pit calls, and racing all over the place. 15 laps after a cycle of green flag pit stops, a caution would come out.

Everyone would come down and get fuel and tires. By doing this, it left everyone but the 19 of Martin Truex Jr with a set of tires left for a late-race restart. So with just under 90 laps to go, we were set for another restart. Martin Truex Jr would lead until the caution which came out with 30 to go. Everyone but the 9, 34, and 38 would come down for one last time for fresh tires. Kyle Larson would get the jump on everyone and take the lead and hold on to the lead the rest of the way picking up his first win this season. The 9, piloted by Josh Berry who is still subbing for the injured Chase Elliott, would slot into second and the 2 front row cars would get top ten finishes.

Now I want to go back and touch on something that happened in stage one between Denny Hamlin and JJ Yeley where Hamlin just flat-out ran over the 15 dumping him in turn one just over 30 laps in the race. Now, what I wanted to say on this is that Hamlin has been preaching respect for the last couple of weeks then to flat-out wreck a guy is beyond the pale. Now I’m not a Denny Hamlin fan, nor am I a JJ Yeley fan. I cannot fathom for the life of me the reason that Yeley still gets rides albeit crap rides for crap teams but still it doesn’t give you the right to wreck a guy because he got around you and you want to preach having respect on the race track

Race Results
POS	DRIVER	CAR	MANUFACTURER	LAPS	START	LED	PTS	BONUS	PENALTY
1	Kyle Larson	5	Chevrolet	400	9	93	52	12	0
2	Josh Berry	9	Chevrolet	400	30	10	0	0	0
3	Ross Chastain	1	Chevrolet	400	4	16	48	14	0
4	Christopher Bell	20	Toyota	400	21	26	45	12	0
5	Kevin Harvick	4	Ford	400	10	0	41	9	0
6	Michael McDowell	34	Ford	400	15	0	31	0	0
7	Joey Logano	22	Ford	400	18	0	36	6	0
8	Alex Bowman	48	Chevrolet	400	1	8	37	8	0
9	Ty Gibbs	54	Toyota	400	14	0	29	1	0
10	Brad Keselowski	6	Ford	400	24	1	34	7	0
11	Martin Truex Jr.	19	Toyota	400	12	56	33	7	0
12	Chase Briscoe	14	Ford	400	19	0	26	1	0
13	Aric Almirola	10	Ford	400	32	0	24	0	0
14	Kyle Busch	8	Chevrolet	400	2	1	23	0	0
15	Todd Gilliland	38	Ford	400	13	0	22	0	0
16	Tyler Reddick	45	Toyota	400	5	0	26	5	0
17	Chandler Smith	13	Chevrolet	400	37	0	0	0	0
18	Ryan Preece	41	Ford	400	33	0	19	0	0
19	Harrison Burton	21	Ford	400	26	0	18	0	0
20	Denny Hamlin	11	Toyota	400	11	71	27	10	0
21	Corey LaJoie	7	Chevrolet	400	16	0	16	0	0
22	Bubba Wallace	23	Toyota	400	28	1	15	0	0
23	Daniel Suarez	99	Chevrolet	400	20	0	14	0	0
24	William Byron	24	Chevrolet	400	3	117	31	18	0
25	Austin Dillon	3	Chevrolet	399	27	0	12	0	0
26	Ryan Blaney	12	Ford	399	17	0	11	0	0
27	AJ Allmendinger	16	Chevrolet	399	25	0	10	0	0
28	Austin Cindric	2	Ford	399	6	0	9	0	0
29	Justin Haley	31	Chevrolet	399	29	0	8	0	0
30	Chris Buescher	17	Ford	398	7	0	7	0	0
31	Erik Jones	43	Chevrolet	398	22	0	6	0	0
32	Ty Dillon	77	Chevrolet	398	36	0	5	0	0
33	Anthony Alfredo	78	Chevrolet	396	35	0	0	0	0
34	Cody Ware	51	Ford	395	31	0	3	0	0
35	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	47	Chevrolet	384	8	0	2	0	0
36	J.J. Yeley	15	Ford	383	34	0	1	0	0
37	Noah Gragson	42	Chevrolet	303	23	0	1	0	0