Denny Hamlin earned a runner-up finish at his home track in Richmond, Virginia on Sunday afternoon to lead Toyota. With the finish, Hamlin moved up to second in the point standings, 39 points behind his teammate Martin Truex Jr. All six Toyota Camry TRD’s finished inside the top-20 today.
Bubba Wallace (12th) extended his points advantage above the Playoff cutline to 54 points, while Ty Gibbs (15th) closed to 18 points behind the final spot as he moved up to 17th in the standings.
Toyota Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Cup Series (NCS)
Richmond Raceway
Race 22 of 36 – 300 miles, 400 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Chris Buescher*
2nd, DENNY HAMLIN
3rd, Kyle Busch*
4th, Joey Logano*
5th, Ryan Preece*
7th, MARTIN TRUEX JR.
12th, BUBBA WALLACE
15th, TY GIBBS
16th, TYLER REDDICK
20th, CHRISTOPHER BELL
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 Mavis Tires & Brakes Toyota Camry TRD, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 2nd
Can you take us through your day and the last laps?
“The whole last couple laps were not good on my end. I got a bad restart. I spun them coming to the green. Kyle (Busch) actually gave me a really good push down the front straightaway to get me going. I got great run through (turns) one and two. I just needed to be beside him. I had to recover too much ground from what I lost on the front stretch. Almost got to the outside, and then on turn four, almost got to the outside again, and then in turn one, I was like I’m just going to ship it in there and try to get to the outside one more time and I just carried way too much speed and locked up the left front tires. Happy for Chris (Buescher) that team really deserved it too. It was going to be luck for us to get a caution to get a second chance to go at him there. They deserved it. RFK, hats off to them. I know how hard they’ve worked to get to this point. Proud of them, and proud of this whole Mavis Toyota team to get to this second-place finish.”
It did look like there may have been some contact with you and Kyle Larson after he got come fresh tires. Can you give us your take on that?
“I think he was having a frustrating day. I understand that it’s all good.”
MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry TRD, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 7th
You were on a different strategy all day. How hard was it to keep track of that in the seat?
“It was tough – honestly, the whole day was tough. This place is never easy, but I felt like as loose as we were all day, that was a handful. It was so on edge. It was really, really difficult to drive and make two laps the same. We just really had to battle. Good job by the guys to do what they did to come up with that strategy. I was flipping out because I didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t hear James (Small, crew chief) again on the radio. Just really a hard fought, battle of a day for our Bass Pro Shops Camry. I thought we were probably going to run fifth there without the caution. We were just so bad on the short runs today, for whatever reason, just luckily only lost two spots there at the end. All-in-all, a decent day, but man, it was tough.”
How difficult was this race physically?
“It was tough. It was definitely really, really hot. It felt longer than 400 laps. I’ll be honest, when we got to the end of stage two – I thought there was no way. I thought that was the checkered flag (laughter). It just felt really, really long. My face felt hot because the helmet blower, it sucks cool air from the outside – and it just felt like a hair dryer. My cheek feels like its sunburned. It’s very, very hot, but it is what it is. We hung on. My shoulder hurts more than anything just from how loose I was all day. I’ll work that out, but the heat wasn’t too bad other than on my face.”
Toyota Racing PR
