23XI Racing dominated the early portion of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at the Richmond (VA) Raceway. Tyler Reddick had never led a lap before on the .75-mile short track but this time, the California native led all 70 laps in the first stage to take the opening stage win. He beat his teammate, Bubba Wallace across the stripe.

However, despite the duo combining to lead 161 of 400 laps, neither came away with a top 10 finish to show for it.

Wallace took over the lead for much of the second stage but a slow stop on Lap 174 took him from first to fourth. That’s where he’d finish at that break. Reddick was one spot better in third.

It was the RFK Racing duo of Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher to capitalize on 23XI Racing opening up the door. Keselowski would take the stage win while Buescher was second.

It was appearing to be a battle of the two organizations for the win in the 22nd race of the 2023 season.

RFK would lead 199 laps compared to 23XI’s 161.

However, Keselowski would slip up when he entered his pit stall awkwardly with 115 laps-to-go from the lead. It cost him precious time on track in going from first on that pit sequence to fifth some 6 seconds. back.

That handed the lead over to Buescher who wasn’t about to squander away an opportunity to end a 28-race skid and stamp his name into the postseason for the first time since 2016.

He extended his lead to over 5 seconds in the closing laps before the first natural caution of the day would come out for an on track incident between Noah Gragson and Daniel Suarez in Turn 4 with 10 to go.

“Scott (Graves) came over the radio, That’s working perfect, keep it up, caution,” Buescher said. “Yeah, that’s about right (smiling). I knew even on our green flag stuff we were so strong during the race, I had a good feeling about it there.”

That brought down the few cars on the lead lap down pit road for which Buescher easily exited in front of last week’s winner, Denny Hamlin. This gave Hamlin a chance to rerack and win for a second straight week.

However, he didn’t do a good enough job on the restart he feels to do any damage for the win though.

“I loved getting the front row. I just got a god-awful restart,” he said. “Kyle (Busch) just pushed me down the front straightaway, which is really helpful for us. Thanks for that.

“I just didn’t do a good job on the restart. I didn’t do a good job into turn one on the second-to-last lap. Our team gave us a shot.”

As a result of a bad restart, he had to drive overly aggressive to make up ground. Due to that, he got into the Turn too hot and slid up the track.

“I drove in way too deep,” Hamlin said of pushing wide on the restart. “I was trying to get to the outside there. Really had a great run off of turn two on the restart and off of four again.

“But, yeah, I was just so close to him there that I wanted to try to squirt a little extra gas to try to get to the outside. Just too much brake.”

Hamlin was still proud of his Mavis sponsored team for keeping him in the hunt all day. He says they lacked a little in comparison to Buescher but overall, it was a good day.

“The race should have been his anyway. The caution at the end… It was a second chance at life for us there at the end.”

Buescher felt like he had a shot to have this win arguably since last Fall. It just came down to execution.

The Texas native was reminded of the move Hamlin did to Kyle Larson last week in Pocono. That contributed to a great launch for which his No. 17 Ford sailed out to a big enough advantage to beat Hamlin by .549-seconds to the win.

“We’ve had this one circled since last fall,” he said. “I was really hopeful this could be the one that would turn the page for us. Sure enough, right off the truck I thought it was.

“I hate that qualifying went the way it did. I was sitting there beating myself up trying to figure out what we were going to do there. Made it to Victory Lane here in Richmond. I’d have told you to flood this place three years ago. My opinions are changing quite a bit here (smiling).

“What a day, though. That’s awesome.

“I mean, so much has happened in 15 years I’ve been there. But the last two years, last 18 months, just to see the turnaround, new car kind of being a good reset for us, to be able to be competing for wins.

“A lot of different size racetracks, a couple checkered flags now, some great pit strategy there, great pit stops. It’s every department working hard to make this happen and get us this checkered flag.

“We’ve been talking about this a lot. Don’t get to ask me about points any more (smiling).”

Kyle Busch finished third behind while Joey Logano and Ryan Preece rounded out the top five.

Notice, there’s 3 Ford’s in the top five. Count Keselowski in sixth, that’s 4 in the top 6. That happened in a race that they weren’t expected to be strong at.

They’ve struggled to lead laps on short tracks this season. They led 37 of 317 laps in Phoenix this spring, just one lap here (out of 400) this past April, eight of 400 in Dover and 16 of 301 in Loudon.

On Sunday, they led 201 of 400. How?

Credit the heat. Fittingly enough, the Cook Out 400 was just that in Richmond, cooking. Temps soared into the 90s for which inside the cars temperates grew to over 130 degrees. As a result, the track was even more slicker than normal.

“I think our weaknesses were hidden today by the lack of grip in the racetrack, mechanical grip seems to come in,” Logano said. “It’s hard to put the power down as it is. I think just where our weaknesses are were masked.”

Coming into the weekend, Ford’s led 1 lap in Sonoma, 2 in Nashville, 0 in Chicago, 145 in Atlanta, 16 in Loudon and 23 in Pocono. The 201 today were more than the previous six races (187 laps led) combined.

Meanwhile, the Chevrolet camp led 245 of 400 laps this past spring but led none on Sunday. That’s the first time all season that they failed to lead a lap.

Part of that was due to the struggles of Hendrick Motosports.

HMS didn’t used to be threats here in Richmond in general. Prior to the spring race dominance, they had just one win here since 2009 (27 starts) and even that lone victory, was on a late race pit strategy and not with the quickest car.

Then came 1-2-8-24 results this spring including them leading a combined 228 of 400 laps (57%). That’s what makes Sunday’s race puzzling for them. They never were factors.

Their top finisher was Chase Elliott in 13th. Alex Bowman and Kyle Larson came home 18th and 19th respectively. William Byron was a lap down in 21st.

If not for that late race caution, none of them would have likely been on the lead lap. At the end of the second stage, just Elliott was on the lead lap. They’d finish 14-18-19-20 in that stage.

Which is right about where they finished too.

Elliott did gain 16 points on the playoff cutline, but he hasn’t had a finish better than 10th over the last month. Bowman is -42 now and hasn’t had a top 10 finish since the spring race here (12 tries without one).

Byron has one top five in his last 8 starts with finishes of 13th, 1st, 24th, 14th, 21st over the last month himself.

Larson has finished 36th, 3rd, 20th, 19th now too.

Trackhouse struggled too. They went P24 and P33.

That opened the door for Ford and Toyota and boy did they capitalize.