In one of the wildest finishes in the history of Richmond Raceway, Austin Dillon locked himself into the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs after a last corner melee.
On the race’s overtime restart, it was Joey Logano who took the race lead. However, going into turn 3 on the final lap, Dillon hit Logano, sending the No. 22 spinning and opening up a lane for Denny Hamlin. However, Dillon hooked Hamlin in the race’s final hundred feet, sending Hamlin into the wall and putting Dillon in victory lane.
Tyler Reddick finished in the runner-up spot, with Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain and Hamlin rounding out the top five. Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, Carson Hocevar, Chase Elliott and Daniel Suarez made up the rest of the top 10.
It was Hamlin who led the first 45 laps of the race, but a fellow Toyota in Bell took advantage of lapped traffic to catch and pass his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate for the race lead. Despite a tense moment with Justin Haley, Bell would go on to win a relatively uneventful stage one that saw both Wallace and Chris Buescher gain crucial stage points in their quest to make the Cup Series playoffs. The stage victory was Bell’s 10th of the 2024 season.
While Bell got off of pit road first, he hit the No. 43 of Erik Jones after exiting his pit stall, incurring damage on the left front of his No. 20. Bell wasn’t the only driver to have trouble on the first round of pit stops, however, as Wallace was once more plagued by pit crew issues, losing seven spots on the first stop of the day.
Suarez and Michael McDowell were the first drivers to put on the softer option tires. The move paid off after the restart for the No. 99 of Suarez, as he quickly made his way into the top five. McDowell would also quickly move up, driving his way from 28th to inside the top 20 in just 15 laps.
Hamlin would take the lead from Bell on the restart, but Suarez’s option tires catapulted him to the lead on lap 93 as McDowell passed Ty Gibbs to move inside the top 15. The veteran moved into the top 10 by lap 101 and continued to easily pass his competitors to move up to seventh.
Chase Briscoe would be the first driver to pit under green on lap 122, with second-place Bell choosing to pit right after. Austin Cindric turned out to be the next taker of the option tire, while Suarez would choose to take off the option tire and put the prime tires back on. Josh Berry also decided to put the option tires on, though the majority of the field…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at …