“In the Know”
Richmond International Raceway
NASCAR and Richmond Raceway will pay tribute to victims and first responders on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 as part of the Salute to American Heroes presented by Toyota featuring the Federated Auto Parts 400 Salute to First Responders NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race and Go Bowling 250 NASCAR Xfinity Series race on Saturday, Sept. 11. Many race teams will also honor and remember the victims and heroes of 9/11 with tribute or patriotic paint schemes, including our No. 10 Smithfield/Tuesday’s Children Ford Mustang.
“With the Salute to American Heroes presented by Toyota, we will honor and remember the first responders and victims of 9/11 throughout our NASCAR Playoff Weekend at Richmond Raceway,” said Richmond President Dennis Bickmeier.
The first NASCAR sanctioned event at Richmond was held in 1953, when the track was officially known as the Atlantic Rural Fairgrounds. Richard Petty holds the crown for all Cup Series racing at the track (13 wins), but Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick dominate the modern racing era at the venue. Harvick has a total of seven Xfinity Series wins and three Cup Series wins.
“Richmond has traditionally been known for putting on some great racing, and one of the reasons for that is that it has become what we consider a high tire wear track,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “As tires wear at Richmond, lap times fall off. Drivers that manage their tires early in a run will have them fall off less and gain from that later in the run. Also, as the track takes rubber, drivers will be able to search around a little or move up the track, creating multiple lanes and more side-by-side racing.”
The Details
● Event: Federated Auto Parts 400 Salute to First Responders (Round 28 of 36)
● Time/Date: 7:30 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Sept. 11
● Location: Richmond (Va.) Raceway
● Layout: .75-mile oval
● Laps/Miles: 400 laps/300 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 80 laps / Stage 2: 155 laps / Final Stage: 165 laps
● TV/Radio: NBCSN / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
What Our Drivers are Saying:
Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4 Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
You’ve had a lot of success at Richmond and you’re a fan of short-track racing in general. What is it about Richmond that makes it a good track for you?
“Through the years we’ve figured out how to get some solid finishes. We had a really good Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford Mustang there earlier this year and wound up blowing a tire and not getting a very good finish. I’m looking forward to going back just because of the fact that we ran so well there at the beginning of the year. Richmond is a little bit like Darlington just in the tire fall-off and the way the cars slow down. The line doesn’t move around very much at Richmond anymore, for whatever reason, so you have to grind away at one particular spot on the racetrack and make your car work as well as possible. It’s definitely a unique short track. It’s got enough speed to where you have to be good under braking and have a good-handling car in order to make it through the long runs that you know you’re going to get throughout the night. Hopefully, we can have a good night. Based upon the first race, we should run well.”
Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Smithfield/Tuesday’s Children Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
How much has changed since the first Richmond race this year?
“It’s hard to say because I feel like Richmond doesn’t change, but everybody always seems to find a way to get better, so you can’t rest on your laurels. If you were good at Richmond last time, you can’t automatically assume that you’re going to beat the competition. Everybody is always looking to find ways to make their cars better from the last race. And you just look at Darlington – I know the patch (of new pavement in turn two) was an added difference and something new about Darlington, but you go back and look at the spring race and look at the cars that ran well, and then you look at this race and there were some different cars running up front. I think the race teams, the organizations, everybody works hard to find more speed in our cars, more downforce, all those things, so that usually equates to stiffer competition in the playoffs, so everybody brings their A-game. I have no doubt that even though we’ve run well at Richmond and we ran well there in the spring, we’re still fine-tuning and tweaking on what we had there in the past to try and make it a race-winning car instead of a top-five car.”
Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Cummins/Rush Truck Centers Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
Do you feel more confident heading into Richmond this time around?
“I think so. I’m a different driver. I’ve learned a lot since April and I feel like as a team we’ve come a long way. We saw in the first race that overcoming a starting position in the back is a really tough thing to do at a place like Richmond and I think, after how things went at Darlington, we’re going to be in just about the same position. Hopefully, we’ve got something that we won’t have to adjust on too much and we can get ahead of that early on. I think we’ll for sure see some differences between racing at night versus the day, but I know Johnny (Klausmeier, crew chief) will have a good plan for how we attack that. I’m just focused on using this as a chance to learn that track more for when we go back next year and see if I can finally figure something out.”
Cole Custer, Driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Demo Day Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing
You’re coming off a near-top-10 finish on a tough racetrack at Darlington last weekend and are headed to another tricky track at Richmond this weekend. Do you feel you and the team might be mounting some momentum for the home stretch of the season?
“It felt like one of our better efforts of the season in most every respect, so that’s definitely a good thing. It was one of those typical up-and-down days, but Mike (Shiplett, crew chief) made a great strategy call that moved us up near the top-10 late in the race. Hoping what we learned at Richmond in the spring race will benefit us this weekend, although the conditions will be pretty drastically different, being that the race is under the lights. We did pretty well in the night race there last fall, and it seemed all of our SHR cars were pretty solid with this 750 (horsepower) package last weekend at Darlington, so I hope all of that bodes well for us and our HaasTooling.com/Demo Day Ford team.”
SHR Stats
In 18 starts, Aric Almirola has earned seven top-10 finishes, two top-fives, and has led one lap on the .75-mile Richmond oval. In his most recent start there, Almirola finished sixth, which was his third-best finish of the year behind Nashville Superspeedway, where he finished fourth, and his win at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. His sixth-place finish in April earned him back-to-back top-10 finishes at Richmond. Almirola and the No. 10 Ford team are bringing the same car to Richmond that piloted the team to a victory at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon on July 18. That win locked Almirola into the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
In Chase Briscoe’s first Cup Series start at the .75-mile oval at Richmond in April, he started 26th and finished 22nd. In five NASCAR Xfinity Series starts there, he has one top-five finish and two top-10s. His best result was a fifth-place finish in September 2019. Briscoe made 15 short-track starts in the Xfinity Series, scoring two wins – last September at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and July 2019 at Iowa Speedway in Newton – among his 10 top-10s.
Kevin Harvick has made 745 career NASCAR Cup Series starts, with 120 of those starts coming on short tracks. And of his 58 Cup Series wins, seven have been at short tracks, with Richmond accounting for three of those victories. Harvick scored his first Richmond win in September 2006, his second in September 2011 and his third in April 2013. Harvick joined SHR in 2014 and has since recorded 35 of his 58 career NASCAR Cup Series wins. However, none of them have been at Richmond. But Harvick has remained stout at the .75-mile oval. In his last 14 starts at Richmond as a member of SHR, Harvick has two runner-up finishes, eight top-fives and 10 top-10s. He has only one finish outside of the top-15. Harvick has led 15,694 total laps in his NASCAR Cup Series career, with 1,180 of those laps coming at Richmond. Harvick is the winningest NASCAR Xfinity Series driver at Richmond with seven victories. (Kyle Busch is next best with six wins.) Harvick finished among the top-10 in all but six of his 21 career Xfinity Series starts at Richmond.
Saturday night’s 400-lap race at Richmond oval will be Cole Custer’s 67th Cup Series start and his fourth on the .75-mile oval. The reigning Cup Series Rookie of the Year’s 14th-place finish there last September, the best of his previous three outings. He started 21st and finished 23rd at Richmond in April. In NASCAR Xfinity Series competition, Custer’s seven career starts at Richmond is more than he’s had at any other track. Best among those starts was the April 2019 race, when he qualified fourth in the No. 00 SHR Ford, led a race-high 122 of 250 laps and took the checkered flag 2.639 seconds ahead of runner-up and fellow Ford driver Austin Cindric. He followed that up with a third-place finish in that year’s September race for his fourth Xfinity Series top-six in seven Richmond starts.
Of Special Interest
Be sure to check out our merch hauler at Richmond Raceway this weekend! If you can’t attend in person, you can shop anytime at store.stewarthaasracing.com
