Having won twice on short tracks already this season, Joe Gibbs Racing entered Richmond International Raceway with high hopes of keeping its perfect record intact.
Joe Gibbs Racing suffers disappointing day at Richmond
Joe Gibbs Racing success on short tracks this season didn’t carry over to Sunday’s race at Richmond.
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Instead of contending as expected, however, only Matt Kenseth posted a respectable finish (seventh) with teammates Carl Edwards (19th), Denny Hamlin (22nd) and David Ragan (23rd) all struggling Sunday in the Toyota Owners 400. Hamlin and Ragan each were two laps down to race-winner Kurt Busch.
“It was better for some than others -- for us overall, it was pretty good,” Kenseth said. “We had some runs that were really, really good, some runs were off.”
Hamlin’s result was especially surprising. The Virginia native and two-time Richmond winner had qualified second and spoke confidently of earning another victory in front of his home state fans. But from the moment the green flag dropped, the No. 11 car backslid down the running order with Hamlin falling to 14th by the Lap 50 competition caution.
“We just missed it,” said Dave Rogers, Hamlin’s crew chief. “Made a few adjustments and obviously went the wrong way. Just got the car way too tight in the center, had to knock out too much speed to get it to change directions and then couldn’t leave the corner either, so we went the wrong way there. We had a good car a couple days ago, but not so good today.”
In the previous short track races this season Hamlin won last month at Martinsville Speedway, with Kenseth winning a week ago at Bristol Motor Speedway. Those are JGR’s only victories of 2015, as the organization has struggled on bigger speedways.
But a shifting of Richmond, measured at .75-miles in length, from a night race to an event held in the day appears to have confounded those within the JGR camp.
Originally scheduled for Saturday evening, steady rain forced NASCAR to postpone the race until the following afternoon. The dramatic change in track and weather conditions presented a challenge to crew chiefs, and the speed the JGR cars showed in practice and qualifying didn’t carryover to Sunday.
“I felt like we were pretty solid on Friday and obviously a lot has changed since Friday -- track conditions and weather -- but when they dropped the green flag we just weren’t as good,” Ragan said.
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