Hendrick Dominating Richmond Is the Field’s Worst Nightmare

From 2009 to 2022, Hendrick Motorsports scored 113 wins at the NASCAR Cup Series level.

The number of wins that came at Richmond Raceway? One.

It was in April 2021, and it wasn’t a race that Hendrick had dominated in particular. Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. combined to lead 314 of the 400 laps, but it was Alex Bowman who snookered Hamlin on a late restart, as he led just the final 10 laps to score Hendrick’s first win at Richmond since September 2008 with Jimmie Johnson.

Hendrick has dominated the start of 2023, as William Byron and Kyle Larson have combined to lead more than 43% of the laps run through seven races this year (748 of 1,735). Individually, Byron (385) and Larson (363) have led more laps than every other team; the four cars of Joe Gibbs Racing have combined to lead 238 laps this year, the second-highest total for a team behind Hendrick.

And just as it has each week, Hendrick backed up its Sunday (April 2) win at Richmond with dominant cars.

The team combined to lead 228 of the 400 laps, with Byron (117) and Larson (93) accounting for the bulk of it. The duo had been battling the JGR cars of Hamlin, Truex and Christopher Bell throughout the race, but it was a late spin by Tyler Reddick that allowed Larson to take the lead on pit road and set sail for his first win of the season.

And with Hendrick’s relatively poor track record at Richmond since the start of the 2010s decade, all the other teams have to be beside themselves about the showing Hendrick just put up.

Richmond By the Numbers

Sunday marked the debut of NASCAR’s new aero package for short tracks and road courses at Richmond. With that, the race had noticeable differences when compared to the Richmond of the last few years.

3,816: The number of green flag passes at Richmond through NASCAR’s loop data (this includes passes at every scoring loop as well as passes that occur during green flag pit stops).

• Sunday marked the most green-flag passes at Richmond since loop data became available in 2005.

8: The number of cautions on Sunday.

• This represents the most cautions in a Richmond race since April 2017, a race that had nine.
• The previous seven races at Richmond had five cautions or less. The September 2020 race had the fewest with three, and none of them were for incidents (two stage cautions and a competition caution).
• Despite the frequency of cautions, the race still managed to have a green-flag run of 130 laps in…