By AMANDA VINCENT
Alex Bowman took the lead late in the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond (Va.) Raceway on Sunday to become the eighth different winner but third for Hendrick Motorsports in the first nine races of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season.
“We just had a great race car; it’s as simple as that,” Bowman said. “Greg Ives (crew chief) and all the guys, they have to deal with me at short tracks and I drive these places really wrong. We kind of instead of trying to make me figure it out, we went to work on getting the race car where I needed it to be. Greg has done such an amazing job at making that happen. First and foremost, got to thank Ally and Chevrolet, everyone at Hendrick Motorsports.
Bowman passed Denny Hamlin with 10 laps remaining in the 400-lap race. Hamlin took runner-up honors for his eighth top-five, so far, this season after leading 207 laps, just over half the race, on Sunday.
“We just didn’t take off quite as good, there, at the end,” Hamlin said. “I tried to warm it up and do everything that I could – just the 48 (Bowman) had a little more on those last few laps, and I couldn’t hold the bottom. Once he got the position, we were just shut down there. Great job by this FedEx Ground team. First and foremost, we want to think of all of the families in Indy right now. Awful tragedy to happen there. Our thoughts and prayers are with these names [pointing to his cap that featured the names of victims of the recent shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis]. We will get them. We will keep digging. We are dominating; just have to finish it.”
Joey Logano finished third after running in the top-three with Hamlin and one of Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammates throughout most of the race. Two more JGR drivers, Christopher Bell and Martin Truex Jr., rounded out the top-five to join Hamlin in giving Gibbs three cars inside the top-five of the finishing order. The remaining JGR driver, Kyle Busch, finished eighth.
Hamlin and Truex dominated the first two stages that ended at laps 80 and 235. Even though, Truex led 105 laps to Hamlin’s 101 in the first 235 laps, Hamlin took both stage wins. After Hamlin, Truex and Logano ran top-three through most of the first 300 laps, Truex was nabbed speeding on pit road during a green-flag cycle of stops just before lap 100. He managed to stay on the lead lap, despite the penalty.
“Driver screwed up our chances, there, for sure. Auto Owner’s Toyota Camry was really fast,” Truex said. “Just like last week, we got off in the middle of the race, and then, stage three, we got it dialed in, and I got caught speeding on pit road. We had to drive all the way back through the field and under green; that was tough. We got all the way back to fifth. Heck of an effort by the guys and wish I hadn’t made that mistake, so I could have seen what I could have done with them.”
Bush, then, replaced his teammate inside the top-three, but he was on the receiving end of his own pit-road penalty, a commitment-line violation, during the final cycle of green-flag stops with just under 60 laps remaining. Bell, then, took his turn inside the top-three before losing third to Bowman with 28 laps to go.
Bowman wasn’t the only driver to take the lead from Hamlin late in the race. Logano took a turn up front when he took the top spot from Hamlin with 66 laps to go. Logano also led laps by taking a lead from Truex in the second half of the race.
Hamlin took his final lead from Logano by getting off pit road first during a caution for a Kevin Harvick wreck with 20 laps remaining. That caution, the fifth and final one of the race, was only the second for an on-track incident. The other came on lap 141 when Ryan Newman spun as a result of contact from Auston Cindric.
Logano’s Team Penske teammate Brad Keselowski also led laps. He stayed out as most of his fellow-competitors pitted under green around lap 185 and led 25 laps before losing the lead to Hamlin, on newer tires, on lap 207 and eventually going a lap down before the end of stage two.
Other top-10 finishers Sunday included Aric Almirola in sixth, William Byron in seventh, Matt DiBenedetto in ninth and Austin Dillon in 10th.
Below, is the complete finishing order of the Toyota Owners 400:
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