Is Day Time The Right Time For Richmond?
For the second straight year, Richmond won’t host a NASCAR playoff or even a playoff deciding race this season either. In fact, they also will host a pair of day races. Is this the better path for the track?
In theory it could because in an era with less practice, you have to strategize this weekend. More on that later..
From 2004 through 2017, Richmond was always the regular season finale. In 2018, it was moved to the postseason. Now, they’ve moved the race up to the summer.
The thing is, this race used to always be a Sunday afternoon race following the Daytona 500. However, lights were installed in the early 90’s around the track. It wasn’t until 1998 that they finally scheduled this for a Saturday night race in primetime.
In 2002, 2007 and 2015, the race was rained out until Sunday. For 2016, it was moved back to Sunday afternoon before 2017, 2018 and 2019 this being back under the lights. Now, we’re back in the day this weekend.
Day racing is typically better for Richmond in the sense that the track is slicker and allows for more passing. Night racing adds more natural grip which makes passing much more difficult.
Both races last year were a strategy battle. What will this one look like and does running on a Sunday in late July hurt attendance due to the heat factor?
Does Richmond Deserve 2 Dates?
NASCAR is an ever evolving schedule. Not many tracks are keeping two weekend’s anymore. Richmond is lucky enough to be able to keep doing so. The thing is, just Richmond, Daytona, Vegas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Martinsville, Bristol, Talladega, Darlington, Kansas and Charlotte each host two races each season.
But, if you break them down, NASCAR owns the tracks at Daytona, Talladega, Phoenix, Richmond, Martinsville, Darlington and Kansas. SMI owns the rest (Vegas, Atlanta, Bristol and Charlotte). Among the SMI dates, Bristol and Charlotte have two separate weekends with Bristol’s spring race being on dirt and Charlotte’s Fall race being on a ROVAL. Vegas and Atlanta are their only two outliers.
Dover, Texas, Pocono, Michigan and Loudon each lost a weekend lately. Chicago and Kentucky are gone.
With NASCAR constantly adding new tracks now, the dates being taken away are those who host two. With Richmond essentially hosting two of the same race weekend’s this season with both falling on a Sunday afternoon, there’s nothing that differentiates the two. Does that hurt their cause for keeping two dates?
They’ve hosted two races a year since 1959. How many more years does this last.
Just look at the tracks that are down to 1 race weekend. Each are seeing some of the biggest crowds at those respective tracks in decades.
2 of the last 3 years, Pocono was down to 1 race weekend but a doubleheader on it. This last two years, it was just 1 race in general. As a result, they just produced the best attended race since 2010. Michigan is trending in the right direction for the biggest attended race there in over a decade. They too are down to 1 race weekend now after being a doubleheader also in 2020.
Since Loudon went to 1 race weekend each year, the grandstands are fuller. For the first time in years, Dover’s attendance gained as prior to the pandemic, the crowds shrunk each year. In 2020 they had COVID restrictions and a doubleheader. Now, they’re gaining again.
Which is good for them but bad for tracks with 2 dates already. It’s like the circus, they come once a year. Don’t show up, you have to wait 365 more days until they’re back.
Is Denny Hamlin The New Villian?
Prior to this season, the most vocal driver fans booed in driver intros was always Kyle Busch. However, since he’s joined RCR, those boos have waned some. The new bad guy may very well be Denny Hamlin.
He’s had run-ins with 3 of the 4 Hendrick Motorsports drivers now and those are the more popular drivers in the field.
From Chase Elliott’s incident with Hamlin in 2017 at Martinsville, to Alex Bowman on the same track in 2021 to two issues this season alone with Kyle Larson (Kansas, Pocono), Hamlin is now receiving the black hat from the fan base.
I mean, I’m just too old to care. Had I gotten another 20 years ahead of me, I get it,” he responded to being asked about being the new “bad guy” in NASCAR.
“Fandom doesn’t give me trophies. Fandom doesn’t do the job for me. In my career, just had some pivotal moments getting into guys when they were super popular, I just kind of wasn’t.
“I’m okay with it because the fans are passionate about what they saw. I think if you were a Denny Hamlin fan, and there was that many, then maybe you’d hear the same thing.”
With being where he is in his career with 50 wins now and multiple trips to victory lane in the Daytona 500, is he welcoming on being the villain?
He has an opinion on a lot and is a nice breath of fresh air that isn’t afraid to stir shit, nor dish it. That can ruffle feathers and he’s open to that. But to be the hated guy in the room?
“I don’t know. I never really resonated with fans for whatever reason,” he said. “I got here on hard work, the old-fashioned way. I’m just not that likable, which is okay. I mean, I think I’m just not one of those good ol’ boys, right?
“I’m myself. I am. Try to treat people really well, do the right things, let the fans cheer for whoever they want. But as long as they’re making some sort of noise, it’s okay.
“I mean, I don’t think anyone likes to be disliked. I don’t know. I mean, no, I don’t try to do anything to lean into it, for sure. I think it just kind of happens naturally, to be honest with you (smiling).
“Some of the questionable incidents, like with the Chase thing, that stirs the things up, right? Me and Chase get together, we crash at Charlotte, it just fires the people right back up that, like, I’m a bad guy.
“I just think that it’s just part of it. I think fandom, it’s a crazy thing, like it really is. I’ve noticed the further away they are, the more boos there are. When they’re up close, they’re actually very nice. I mean, they are. It’s so different, like, walking out versus someone that’s on the other side of a fence.
“It reminds me of, like, social media. The further you can get from face-to-face interaction, the more hateful you can become. Kind of you just need to look at someone on social media when they’re hateful, look at their posts. They’re hateful to everyone. They’re just an unhappy person.
“I don’t fault the fans for not liking me because there’s people in sports that I don’t like. I’ve never met ’em. I root for the other team. So, when they root for the other team, and that team doesn’t win, they think I’m responsible for that team not winning, you see the reactions that you do.”
With being back in his home state of Virginia, I’m curious how receptive his ovation will be during driver intros.
Can Bell Get Season Turned Around Again?
Christopher Bell started the 2023 season off with six Top-6 finishes in the first eight races. It coincided with a trip to victory lane on Easter Night at Bristol Dirt. However, in the 13 races since, he has just a pair of top six results, both being sixth place at that.
However, maybe Richmond is the spot that he can turn his season back around again.
Bell has nine Top-6 finishes in 11 Richmond starts and that includes five Xfinity Series starts too.
He was fourth and third in 2021, sixth and runner-up last year and fourth in the spring race. He’s led at least 10 laps in three of the last four Richmond races and has done so despite not having a top five starting spot.
On short tracks this season, he was sixth in Phoenix, fourth here, 16th (Martinsville), sixth (Dover) and 29th (Loudon) respectively.
The thing is, he’s also not had a Top-5 finish in each of the last 13 races though either which could make folks wary. Still, a pole in Loudon two races ago was negated by problems on pit road. He’s had the speed, they’ve just not been executing. Eventually, they will. Maybe that comes this weekend.
Is Richmond A NASCAR Throwback?
In this era of NASCAR as stage breaks were added and cars designed to run closer than ever together, tracks like Richmond are becoming more and more of an anomaly. Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta are drafting tracks. You have six road courses now on the schedule. Combined, that’s 12 of the 36 races just right there between them.
You also have the intermediate tracks that are getting closer and closer. Short tracks like Bristol and Martinsville are intensely packed together.
Richmond, well it’s different.
These pair of races now are an old-fashioned NASCAR race. While I get these types of races aren’t for everybody, this is what makes racing fun for us that grew up on this style.
Cautions are typically limited, and teams try out different strategies as a result. They’re all open. In the second stage last year, six cars were going to try to make it on one stop. Everyone else did it on two. While Joe Gibbs Racing had the top two cars, they were on different strategies.
It paid off when everyone pit on Lap 233 during the caution for the second stage break. Then, the first two early cautions in the final stage to go along with the different philosophies in the final 100 laps left us with what I thought was a thrilling show.
There were stops basically every 30 or so laps with two different cycles. The tire fall off made this fun.
We had 4 green flag pit cycles that race which was almost equal to the amount that we had in the first 6 races combined (5) at that point of the year.
This isn’t the typical new school race where drivers are all bunched up in the end and can just plow over cars to get by. It was spread out and technical. You had to tip toe around the track because the harder you push, the slower you go.
As a result, it’s not so tightly condensed which in turn can cause the leaders to sometimes be in their own zip code. That’s because they’ve nailed a setup and deserve to be where they are.
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