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In the Know – Richmond

In The Know – Richmond

Richmond marks the third-to-last race of the regular season before the NASCAR Playoffs begin Sept. 4 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway. Get up-to-speed on race info, driver stats, our weekly wraps, and more as we head to Virginia, the state that is for racers.

The Details

NASCAR Cup Series Overview

Event:  Federated Auto Parts 400 (Round 24 of 36)
● Time/Date:  3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 14
● Location:  Richmond (Va.) Raceway
● Layout:  .75-mile oval
● Laps/Miles:  400 laps/300 miles
● Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 70 laps / Stage 2: 160 laps / Final Stage: 170 laps
● TV/Radio:  USA / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

BROADCAST

SHR FAST FACTS

Kevin Harvick:
Speaking of winning, with his victory at Michigan, Harvick has now won in 18 of his 22 NASCAR Cup Series seasons. His first victory was on March 11, 2001 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Harvick has 59 career Cup Series wins, 28 of which have come since he turned 40. Now, the 46-year-old Harvick is 10th on the series’ all-time win list, and with his last 24 victories being with Ford, Harvick is also 10th on Ford’s all-time win list, where he is one of only 13 drivers to win 20 more races with the manufacturer.

Harvick has made 777 career NASCAR Cup Series starts, with 125 of those starts coming on short tracks. And of his 59 Cup Series wins, seven have been on 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 Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) in 2014 and has since recorded 36 of his 59 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 16 starts at Richmond as a member of SHR, Harvick has three runner-up finishes, nine top-fives and 12 top-10s. He has only one finish outside of the top-15.

Aric Almirola:
In 20 starts, Almirola has earned seven top-10 finishes, two top-fives, and has led one lap on the .75-mile Richmond (Va.) Raceway oval. In his last seven qualifying attempts there, he has started outside the top-10 just twice with a best start of sixth in the September 2016 race.

Almirola has shown speed at shorter tracks this season. He qualified second at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway and secured a top-10 finish. Almirola qualified fifth at Phoenix Raceway in March and had a fast Smithfield Ford. He qualified 10th in his last visit to Richmond this past April, but an ill-timed caution put him two laps down, ultimately finishing 21st.

Chase Briscoe:
Briscoe, a dirt-racer from Indiana, struggled to find success on the short tracks throughout his time in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series, Xfinity Series and in his first year in the Cup Series in 2021. When this Cup Series season began with the Busch Light Clash at the L.A. Coliseum on Feb. 6, Briscoe was consistently one of the best on track through practice, qualifying and the first laps of the race. The first points-paying race of the year at a track 1 mile or shorter came March 13 at Phoenix Raceway, a track that had seemed to have a stranglehold on Briscoe. However, the 27-year-old conquered Phoenix this time to earn his first Cup Series victory.

Since the win at Phoenix, Briscoe has finished no worse than 15th  in six starts on tracks 1 mile or shorter, with the exception of his 22nd-place result April 17 on the dirt at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, when he led 59 laps but spun on the final lap while attempting a pass for the win. Last year, Briscoe’s best finish on the shorter tracks on the NASCAR schedule was a 13th-place result earned in the fall at Bristol.

Cole Custer:
Sunday’s 400-lap race will be Custer’s 99th career Cup Series start and his sixth at Richmond. His 14th-place finish in the September 2020 race there is the best of his previous five outings and it helped him earn that year’s Cup Series Rookie of the Year honors. He qualified 12th and finished 22nd in this season’s first Richmond race April 3.

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. Custer also started on the pole and led 43 laps en route to a sixth-place finish in the April 2018 race in his SHR Ford, and scored a sixth-place finish in his Richmond debut in the Xfinity Series, driving the No. 5 JR Motorsports entry in the April 2016 race.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS

Check out the schemes we’re bringing to Richmond for some short track racing.

What Our Drivers are Saying:

Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

You won last Sunday at Michigan. After developing the NextGen car and finally getting that coveted victory, what has this car been like to get it to where you want it to be?
“It’s all totally different. I think after the Roval test last year, I knew not to have any expectations for this year. We were either going to be on the front side of this thing or we were going to be behind. There wasn’t going to really be any middle road. We found out we were behind and had to start really going to work, and I think as you look at this particular car, everything about it is different. You’ve got an electronic mirror, which I love, because it’s just so easy to use, right in your line of sight, you don’t have to move your eyes as far. But when you talk about stuff like that, you have to be very open-minded to, just, change. For me, I was prepared for change. I was prepared for work. We had a pretty extensive plan this year of using the simulator and trying to make it better, to make it fit with what we do at the racetrack with the short practices.”

Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Smithfield for Stewart-Haas Racing:

What kind of challenge does a short track like Richmond bring?
“I would say Richmond is one of the most challenging racetracks we go to for managing your tires throughout the run. The first 10, 15 or 20 laps of the run can make you feel like Superman roaring through the field, but you will pay a major penalty for that by lap 40. It makes it fun because, when we show up at Richmond, it really is about managing tire fall-off and making sure your car stays consistent throughout the run as the tires fall off.”

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

We’re getting closer to the end of the regular season. Is Richmond a place you feel like you can improve your playoff standing before Daytona?
“I think so. We’ve been really strong on the short tracks this year and SHR has done a great job getting the most we can out of these cars. So, yeah, I think we can have a really good day. The most important thing for us is to survive and have a good points day. We’re definitely in a better place than we were two or three weeks ago but we can’t get too comfortable. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a lot of big wrecks at Richmond, but there was a time when it was really easy to get caught in someone else’s mess, so we have to stay on the lookout for that and do the best we can to be there at the end.”

Cole Custer, Driver of the No. 41 Jacob Construction Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

You’ve run at Richmond so much during your career, are you immersed in footage and data from your previous runs there to figure out how you’re going to get around there Sunday?
“Yeah, that’s every weekend for me. I look at old races and try and talk to (SHR teammate) Kevin (Harvick) every weekend to find out what he’s looking for. He’s been a huge help the last few years. All of my teammates have been. It was tough going straight to racing with no practice or qualifying the last two years. You can look at as much film and data as you want, but you’re still missing the experience of actually being out there. You know what you need to work on, but you really don’t learn as much until you’re actually out there on the track. In the spring race this year, it was huge to have the chance to practice and qualify before the race. Hopefully, that experience will help put us over the top on Sunday.”

Relive Harvick’s clutch win

Kevin Harvick snapped a 65-race winless streak at a critical time in the season, needing a win to get into the playoffs. Relive the magical moments of The Closer’s victory and the moment he proved all the doubters wrong. 

 

MENTOR & MENTEE: Highs & lows

The boss Tony Stewart has some advice for Chase Briscoe on the highs and lows of our sport: racers keep diggin’ no matter what. Hear all of the boss’ advice to Chase on episode 3 of our Mentor & Mentee series presented by Mahindra Tractors.