Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway was one of the least eventful NASCAR Cup Series races of the season, with only three caution flags and few on-track lead changes.
Chris Buescher won after holding off Denny Hamlin and others on a late restart, following a caution brought out by Daniel Suarez spinning. That was the only caution of the race aside from the two stage breaks.
Naturally, many fans thought the race was a bore, with a number of calls for Richmond to have one of its two Cup Series dates taken away and given to a different track. While there’s an argument to be made in regard to that, the fact of the matter is that not every race is going to be a barn-burner.
If every race was above average, then the threshold for what constitutes average would be lowered, and the truly great races would not be as great. And while Richmond may not have had endless lead changes and raging tempers, there were other elements that came into play.
The strategy was imperative, with extremely high tire wear forcing drivers to make pit stops roughly once every 50 laps. In the second and third stages, it was advantageous to pit two different times — keep in mind that a pit stop usually costs a driver more than 30 seconds on the track under green — as opposed to only once.
Martin Truex, Jr. was the only driver who was able to conserve his tires enough to make the single-stop strategy work. Everybody else who tried it fell multiple laps down, including playoff hopefuls Suarez and Michael McDowell.
There were also plenty of different players at the front throughout the race. 23XI Racing teammates Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace dominated the first half, and then Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing teammates Brad Keselowski (the team’s co-owner) and Buescher were the class of the field in the second half.
Keselowski ended up leading 102 laps to pace all drivers. He may have had a chance to capture his first win since 2021 and first as an owner-driver, but a botched entry to his pit stall under green handed the lead to Buescher.
NASCAR races don’t need double-digit cautions in order to be good. Sometimes they are a more slow-paced, methodical art form, and true fans will appreciate the subtle nuances of the sport that were on display on Sunday.