Chris Buescher raises his trophy Sunday after winning the Cook Out 400 in Richmond, Va. Skip Rowland/Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. — Chris Buescher pulled away on a restart with three laps to go and won at Richmond Raceway on Sunday, earning himself a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
Buescher led 88 laps. He was ahead by nearly six seconds when a caution came out with under 10 laps to go. That erased his sizable lead over local favorite Denny Hamlin, who was booed by his hometown crowd in prerace introductions.
But Hamlin got a poor final restart and Buescher easily pulled away for his first Cup Series win of the season, and third of his career.
“I knew that last restart was going to be tough, but I knew we had the speed in this thing,” Buescher said.
He and RFK Racing teammate Brad Keselowski led a combined 190 of the 400 laps. Keselowski, now a part owner of the team, led 102 laps on the 0.75-mile oval but finished sixth.
Buescher started 26th and had to drive through the field for the win that locked him into the 16-driver playoff field with four races remaining in the regular season. Buescher became the 13th race winner this year, but one winner, Shane Van Gisbergen, is ineligible for the playoffs because he’s not a full-time driver in the Cup Series. That leaves four playoff spots up for grabs over the next month.
Hamlin, the winner last week at Pocono, finished second in a Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. Kyle Busch was third in a Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing, followed by the Fords of Joey Logano from Team Penske and Ryan Preece of Stewart-Haas Racing.
Keselowski, despite being winless this season, is currently in a playoff position based on points.
“One win is good, but you get three or four or five and then you feel a lot better,” said Keselowski. “It sure beats not having any at all, but we want to keep going. It’s nice to have one car locked in the playoffs. We need to get both cars locked in the playoffs. We have a good points gap, but we want wins and this is where we need to be.”
The race was slowed just three times by caution flags, the last sending the leaders to pit road for four tires with eight laps to go. When the green flag was shown again, Buescher used the inside line to pull away for his third career victory.
Hamlin’s bid for the victory ended on the second lap of the final sprint when he drove in too deep in the first turn and slid up the track. He finished 0.549 seconds behind Buescher, with Busch winding up 0.817 off the winning pace.
“I got a bad restart,” Hamlin said. “I had to recover too much ground from what I lost on the frontstretch. Almost got to the outside, and then in Turn 4, almost got to the outside again, and then in Turn 1, 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.”
SCORCHER
With temperatures in the mid-80s, it was about 15 degrees cooler than Saturday, when the temperature approached 100 and the heat index was at least 105.
Nevertheless, points leader Martin Truex Jr. struggled.
“It was definitely really, really hot,” he said. “It felt longer than 400 laps. I’ll be honest, when we got to the end of Stage 2, I thought there was no way. I thought that was the checkered flag. It just felt really, really long.”
Truex finished seventh.
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