For the NASCAR Cup Series, it’s time to get back to work.
Following the teams’ two-weekend hiatus because of the Olympics, the sport’s top stock-car drivers return to action with Sunday night’s Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway in Virginia’s state capital.
Starting with William Byron’s victory in a Monday-makeup Daytona 500 on Feb. 19, the series got at it for 23 straight weekends, 22 points races and the exhibition All-Star Race in May.
Some great finishes dotted the pre-break racing, like ones at Atlanta, Kansas City, Talladega and Nashville, but the competition also has suffered from an increased inability of fast cars closing in on the leader and being unable to complete a race-winning pass.
The lack of charges from trailing cars has led to an impassable cushion with lackluster racing as the checkers near.
And Richmond has been one of the guilty culprits, both this season and over the past few.
While more short-track racing usually would be a welcome sight after the Olympics created a break from motorsports on the NBC networks, the three-quarter-mile speedway might be taking its own time off starting in 2025.
Within the industry, it is rumored that the facility likely will lose one of its two dates when next season’s schedule is released. The release date was Oct. 4 last year, but schedule leaks haven’t shown a promising future for Richmond.
And the problem might just be that there has not been enough action on what is known as “The Action Track.”
Once mentioned in the same sentence with Bristol as the toughest ticket to get on the circuit due to its excitement, Richmond has been a fixture on NASCAR’s annual stops dating back to its first race in 1953, won by Lee Petty.
Since 1959, the Commonwealth’s second-oldest track — southern neighbor Martinsville Speedway started in 1949 — has held two events every season except for 2020 during the COVID-affected campaign.
The scuttlebutt says that the 2025 spring race at Richmond, a NASCAR-owned track, may move to another facility shepherded by the sanctioning body.
“I don’t know what else you do,” said Denny Hamlin, who hails from nearby Chesterfield, Va., after winning Richmond’s first 2024 race on Easter Sunday night. “Certainly it’s not fair because I’m biased and have grown up loving this race track, so I’m always going to vote for it to have two races, for sure.”
Whether it has been in the current Next Gen car or the two previous versions, Hamlin has more often than not been one of the top drivers every time the series pulls into the D-shaped track.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver has five Richmond wins and 14 top-10s in his past 17 races at his home speedway.
He ranks fourth there in laps led (2,243), putting him behind Richard Petty, Rusty Wallace and Bobby Allison.
Also this weekend, NASCAR will give teams a tire option, offering a longer-run prime Goodyear and a short-run softer one in a strategy the higher-ups used at North Wilkesboro Speedway in the All-Star Race.
At this point, NASCAR is willing to try anything to rejuvenate Richmond’s racing and its place on the schedule.
–Field Level Media