Richmond is at a crossroads as far as the NASCAR Cup Series goes. Last year, the September race had the second lowest TV rating of any Cup race run in its scheduled time slot. The only one rated lower was the Saturday race at Pocono, which got cut from the schedule. In order to remedy this, NASCAR moved the race up a month to get it out of football season and made it a day race. Problem is, Richmond can be toasty in August.
This was a strategy-filled event. When you took your tires was key. If you waited too long to pit, you likely compromised your race, like Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Speaking of that, I’m a little confused over that mess. He was announced on-air as having received a speeding penalty on his green-flag stop. However, when he tried to pit the first time and understeered into Martin Truex Jr., he ran over the orange box in the process. I thought that would have been a commitment line violation. If he had sped on pit road as well when he did stop, wouldn’t the second penalty have converted his drive-through penalty to a stop-and-go?
As compared to last year, you had a race with fewer lead changes, but you had more passes in general. That resulted in a good amount of action for position during the race. USA did a pretty good job in showing those battles, likely better than last fall. There was a bunch of split-screen coverage in order to show multiple battles on-track. In addition, there were multiple “Through the Field” segments during the broadcast as well, something that really hasn’t happened in a while. It was nice to see.
I found the overall product to be quite good, but also polarizing. As noted above, this used to be a night race. It will take a lot of getting used to for Richmond to not have a Cup race at night. Heck, after all of Richmond’s Cup races being scheduled for Saturday nights for nearly 20 years, having a day race there has been a novelty in recent years.
Racing in the daytime opens up a wider racetrack for action as the track becomes rather slippery with direct sunlight. Even when it clouded up, the groove was still pretty wide. That action seemed to satisfy Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Man it was so good to see drivers using the entire track today @RichmondRaceway. Multiple grooves. That’s the best version of Richmond. The only version for me.
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) August 14, 2022
Did I enjoy the on-track product? Sure. It’s an extension of what we saw back in April, although I think it was warmer back…
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