By AMANDA VINCENT
After struggling through the first six races of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season, failing to post a top-10 finish, Denny Hamlin won in his home state of Virginia on Sunday when he took the checkered flag at Richmond Raceway. His win also was the first for Toyota this season in the race sponsored by the manufacturer — the Toyota Owners 400.
“It was just a matter of time. We weren’t just going to hang back where we were, but everyone worked so hard on my JGR Toyota Camry team,” Hamlin said. “First and foremost, I’ve got to thank my sponsors – SportClips, FedEx, Coca-Cola, the Jordan Brand, Toyota – such a huge partner of ours, and our new sponsor – Logitech. Great to have them on our car now. You just have a tough season and things aren’t going well. It seems like everything is not going your way and the law of averages say things are going to work out and we’ll get our performance better and today’s the day where it all matched up.”
Sunday’s win, though, was Hamlin’s fourth at his home track and the sixth for Joe Gibbs Racing in the last eight races there.
One of Hamlin’s JGR teammates, Martin Truex Jr., and William Byron led most of the 170-lap final stage of the race before Hamlin led only the final five laps of the 400-lap race en route to the win.
Kevin Harvick also got by Truex and Byron in the closing laps to finish second.
“Yeah, I’m just really proud of everyone on our Mobil 1 Ford Mustang for just staying in there and having a great strategy and doing everything that they did all day,” Harvick said. “It was really the first clean day that we’ve had all year. The cars have been fast, and had a shot there at the end. I wanted to be close enough with the white to just take a swipe at him, but the lapped cars kind of got in the way and I lost a little bit of ground. Still, it’s a great day for us and, hopefully, a little bit of momentum in a positive direction.”
Byron was third after leading 122 laps, Truex fourth, and Kyle Larson rounded out the top-five.
Ryan Blaney started on the pole and led the first 128 laps of the race, including a stage-one win on lap 70, before a green-flag pit stop on lap 129.
In the second stage, pit strategies varied with most drivers dividing the 160-lap stage into thirds with two green-flag pit stops and a small handful of others dividing the distance into halves with a single stop.
Christopher Bell, on the single-stop strategy, led laps before Truex, on newer tires after two stops, took the lead on lap 212 on his way to the stage-two win on lap 230.
Byron stayed out during the second of two cautions early in the final stage — the fifth and final caution of the race on lap 257 — to inherit the lead from Truex. Byron and Truex, then, made only one additional stop each under green (Byron with 88 laps to go and Truex 11 laps later) while most of their fellow-competitors stopped two more times and had newer tires for the final green-flag run to the finish.
“Thought we probably did the best job we could. It didn’t quite work out,” Byron said. “I thought there at the end they told me I was just racing the 19 (Truex). I’m like ok I got him, but then the 4( Harvick) and the 11 (Hamlin) were on a totally different planet. That’s just part of it. There wasn’t anything I could do about them, so it was probably four or five to go and Brandon (Lines) was coaching me on keeping the tires underneath it and having good exits and entries. Especially making those guys go around me, on the top was definitely better. The times that guys would get underneath me was really, really hard to get back connected and get a good lap put together. The middle of the race we were terrible and we just couldn’t get in the corner at all and if you can’t get into the corner you can’t put consistent laps together. It’s nice to have a run like we had today.”
Bell finished sixth, Blaney was seventh after leading a race-high 128 laps, William Byron eighth, Kyle Busch ninth, and Austin Dillon was 10th.
“It’s tough. There were a handful of cars that could kind of run up and run in traffic pretty good, and we just weren’t really good enough to run in traffic,” Blaney said. “Once we lost track position, I struggled a little bit, but it’s nice to win a stage. It’s cool to get the pole and good stage points. We finished seventh, my best finish here. Overall, a fun day. It was kind of frustrating because we were running so good early. I wanted to run better, but I can’t complain about it too much. Overall, not a bad day. We just have to find a little bit more speed, but it was nice that we kind of put together some decent notes and have an OK run at Richmond.”
Below, are the results of the Toyota Owners 400:
