The Bow on the Hood

Saturday night at Richmond, the hood of the No. 33 will carry a painting of Kyle Busch taking his victory bow. Richard Childress Racing is honoring the celebration he made famous across Austin Hill's car, along with the fund Kyle and Samantha built for couples fighting infertility. Richmond is the right track for it. After our Richmond post went up this week, a reader made the case better than we did:

Every number in that comment checks out in our database. Six wins between 2009 and 2018, the spring race four years straight, both races in 2018. The record adds its own texture: he led 226 laps in the 2010 win and 235 in 2011, and that April 2018 win came from 32nd on the grid, the deepest winning drive here since 2005. Nobody owned this place like Kyle Busch.

A win from 32nd is the track working as designed

The design starts with the surface. Short tracks are the slowest ovals NASCAR visits, and aerodynamic force scales with the square of speed, so the aero advantage that decides intermediate tracks barely exists here. What is left is mechanical grip, and Richmond has not been repaved since 2004. Goodyear calls it one of the highest-wear tracks on the circuit. Tires fall off hard, the fastest car at the start of a run is rarely the fastest at the end of it, and track position off pit road is worth more than raw speed.

This week Goodyear leaned into it. For the first time, Richmond gets the new left-side tire the series ran at Martinsville and North Wilkesboro this year, a combination built to grip early and give up lap time as it wears. Goodyear's product manager said it plainly in their race notes: tire management will be critical. They are bringing a tire race to a tire racetrack.

So here is the whole thesis. Richmond is a tire race. The winner manages the long run, takes track position on pit road, and closes the final cycle. Qualifying tells you almost nothing.

The current car made it ruthless

In seven Richmond races since 2022, nobody has won from the pole. The average winner started 12.7th. And the car that led the most laps has not won once, zero for seven. Across the full forty races since 2005, the dominator converted about a third of the time, so this is not just Richmond being Richmond. The Next Gen car took a track-position racetrack and sharpened every edge of it.

The defending winner, and his price

Which brings us to Austin Dillon. He has won two straight Cook Out 400s, and they were not flukes: he ran sixth on average in both races, worked the pit cycles, and closed. That is exactly the win this track hands out. The problem is everything since.

Over the last 24 months, Dillon averages a 19.0 finish on flat tracks. Over the last six months it is 20.9, and flat has quietly stopped being his best surface; he has been better on steep ovals and road courses in that window. This season he has one top-10 in seven flat-track races, Sunday's 10th at Iowa, against a 23rd at North Wilkesboro, a 25th at Martinsville, and a 29th at the Brickyard. The market does not care. FanDuel has him at +1500, the best available price and an implied 6.3% to win, and the five-book average implies about 7.6% with the vig included. Our sim ran Saturday's race 10,000 times and gives him 1.6%, with a median finish of 15th. The books are charging you for the story, not the driver.

One more number for the DFS crowd: he projects at 23% ownership. Heavy ownership on thin win equity is leverage against the field, not with it.

The form chart, and a correction

In the spring we called Joey Logano's season a season to forget. We were wrong. He was 20th in points at the end of June with two top-fives in twenty races, and then he led 323 of 450 laps at North Wilkesboro. Over his last five races he has outrun his season average by more than ten spots, the biggest positive swing in the field. A short-track shellacking from a three-time champion, two races before another short track, is not something we get to wave off.

The team story is louder. Christopher Bell, Ty Gibbs, and Chase Briscoe are all running four to ten spots ahead of their season averages, Gibbs just won Iowa, and Denny Hamlin has 14 top-five finishes in 24 races, the most in Cup. Richmond is his home track, he has led 2,367 laps here since 2005, and his 8.2 average finish is the best of anyone entered Saturday. Joe Gibbs Racing could plausibly put four cars in the top ten.

The cold side is two Hendrick cars. Kyle Larson is running 13 spots below his season average on a career-worst 47-race winless streak, though the speed reads better than the finishes: most of the slide is wrecks and parts failures, and he is still stacking stage points. Chase Elliott sits four spots below his own average. Having two of Hendrick's cars on the cold side of the Heat Check at this stage of the season is concerning, and more concerning yet is seeing Larson officially show up as a colder car than Tyler Reddick, who has had that crown for the past month and a half. William Byron is the one warming up, three spots better than a season average that sat at 15.2, so call it a recovery rather than a heater.

What the sim says

Put the track and the form together and Saturday's list follows. Three drivers clear a 10% win chance on our sim: Hamlin at 16.9% with a median finish of 5th, Logano at 13.2%, and Bell at 11.3%. Ryan Blaney sits just under the line at 8.4% with a median of 6th. There is a real tension in the top name: the track's greatest active dominator, at a racetrack that has stopped paying dominators. His median finish says the floor is high even on the nights the win does not come.

Richmond is the 24th regular-season race of 26, with only New Hampshire and Daytona left before the Chase field locks. Thirty-seven cars, Saturday night, 7 p.m. ET, and a new tire nobody has run here. Watch the long runs. The winner is whoever manages them and steals the final pit cycle.