Defending Richmond Raceway in the Next Gen Era

by
Peter Stratta
August 2, 2023

Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images

Appreciating a Different Type of Action at Richmond Raceway

Formerly known as ‘The Action Track,’ Richmond Raceway still provides an entertaining racing product and nearly-unmatched fan experience deserving of its place on the NASCAR calendar.

The most populous state without a single big four professional sports team, the Commonwealth of Virginia’s capital city features one of NASCAR’s most historic and revered tracks just 10 minutes from downtown.

Few tracks in current day NASCAR can match the lore and prestige of Richmond Raceway. First opened as a half-mile fairgrounds dirt oval in 1946, Lee Petty took NASCAR’s inaugural Richmond checkered flag in 1953. The dirt oval was paved in 1968, and then reconfigured 20 years later into today’s current layout–a 3/4-mile D-shaped oval.

Lee’s son Richard Petty won a record 13 times at Richmond Raceway. This mark only trails The King’s 15 victory tallies at Martinsville and North Wilkesboro for most wins by a driver at a single track. Sunday marked Richmond Raceway’s 134th Cup Series race, only falling shy of Daytona and Martinsville. From NASCAR’s pioneering days to now, Richmond Raceway has held a place among stock car racing’s tapestry.

Around the turn of the millennium, NASCAR abandoned some fan-favorite short tracks for glistening new intermediate tracks in flashy television markets. Despite this shift in philosophy, two annual trips to Richmond Raceway remained constant.

A track that once boasted a 25-race streak of sellout crowds had a decent-sized turnout last Sunday, but not quite back to the glory days. Richmond Raceway invested $30 million into infrastructure to modernize their facilities in 2017, creating a fan experience on par with Daytona and Phoenix. Why is such a tradition-steeped, centrally located and up-to-date track still not as well received as other NASCAR venues? It appears to come down to the apparent lackluster racing for which Richmond has become known.

Outside of Stage breaks on Sunday, there was only one natural caution with 10 laps remaining. This week was one of many largely clean Richmond races in recent times. Aside from this year’s spring race having eight cautions, no Richmond date has seen that many yellows since 2017. What Sunday may have missed out on in a viral moment made up for with many drivers trying to win on divergent strategies.

While some may see that as a boring day without any restarts, others can appreciate the strategy factor that comes into play with during a race with long-runs and extreme heat.

“It just depends, if you’re a purist you like it,” second-place finisher Denny Hamlin said about Richmond’s on-track product. “If you like side-by-side close racing here, then you have an issue with today. It’s so tough. Sometimes you have these type of races, where Max wins by 30 seconds and there’s just no stiff competition. The cars are running the same damn times and everyone’s falling off to the same pace. I’ll just keep beating the old lap time variation hammer until we get it better.”

“Really as a purist I loved it. I controlled so much of my destiny through the things I was doing while driving. But the fan doesn’t really care about that. They just want to see close side-by-side racing.”

Hamlin inferring that Richmond’s Sunday race was anything like a current F1 event with the Max Verstappen comment was an over-exaggeration sure to draw ire from some.

Race-winning car owner and sixth-place finisher Brad Keselowski also spoke on Sunday’s entertainment value from his view. “When you don’t know if it’s going to be a 10-lap run or a hundred-lap run, you have to make choices with how you drive the car, set up the car, how you approach the entire weekend as a team. That creates all these different variabilities throughout the field that I think makes races fun as hell.”

“From the driver perspective, when they dropped the green at the start of Stage 2, I was just digging. I’m in the background going, ‘Oh, God, don’t let this go long green flag run,’ because I knew I burnt the rear tires off this car.”

“That part to me is fun. That’s the challenge. It feels like there’s a game of chess going on and you’re trying to play it as smart as you can, trying to have the feedback loop with the team so they don’t over-adjust because you burnt the tires off, all these different things.”

“That’s what Cup racing to me is. Every once in a while you get these short-run races where there’s a lot of wrecks. The variability is what makes Cup to me so much fun, is just not knowing what you’re going to get.”

“By nature, that means you have to have races with long runs because everyone will sell out for short runs, then the racing get dramatically worse. When everybody in the field can sell out for short runs, you never see any passing, comers and goers. Start the air pressures high, do all these different things, have the car crazy sideways loose. That to me is the worst racing you’re ever going to see.”

“Yeah, I appreciate races that have long runs. The end of this race came down to a short run. Three-lap green-white-checkered-ish kind of run. I think there’s a little bit of everything in there.”

“I love the fact that at a track like this you can run the bottom, middle, the top. That puts it in a spot when you have racing like this that makes elite drivers want to be in this series. I think that’s really important.”

“You’ve heard me say it a couple times. We need this series to be a series where the format rewards elite talent. If you continue to strip things out of it, that elite talent does well, you’re just going to drive them away or they’re not going to rise to the top. That’s not good for us.”

“I think in that light, yeah, I love the fact that there were long green-flag runs today. We had a fast car, it favored us to some extent. There’s weeks where it doesn’t. I think that’s part of what makes Cup racing special.”

Richmond’s winningest active driver Kyle Busch shared how much he struggled in his first time to the short track. “When I first came here, it was in the Truck Series on the old asphalt back with the sealer and stuff,” Busch said. “I was terrible, I think I hit every wall there was here that night. And then I came back the next time with the Xfinity cars. I sat on the pole, won the race for my first win and that was the repave of this track in 2004. I’ve just always enjoyed it, always liked it since then.”

If sealer kept a talent as skilled as Kyle Busch scratching his head twenty years ago, then perhaps Richmond Raceway should experiment with it again. Similar compounds have been used for all three Cup Series events at Nashville Superspeedway, allowing for multi-groove racing to develop.

Much like last week’s venue Pocono Raceway, the true Richmond Raceway experience is excellent in person but can struggle to translate to the greater television viewing audience.

My first personal trip to Richmond Raceway was in April of 2016. As a devout Tony Stewart fan at the time, there was no chance I was going to miss his return race from breaking his back ahead of his final NASCAR season. I still vividly remember him getting the wave around late in that race and wheeling the No. 14 Chevrolet to finish 19th. The drama up front with Carl Edwards’ bump and run on Kyle Busch played second-fiddle to my fan experience that day. Fan ingress and egress for Richmond is top-notch, and an ability to walk around the track uninterrupted is also a nice touch. Both of these important amenities remain true to this day.

How can Richmond Raceway transform back into a can’t-miss ticket on the NASCAR schedule? Monday and Tuesday this week saw a short track package test in the Commonwealth, trying out a new splitter that will hopefully go into effect for the 2024 season. The short track package has been one area of great critique for the Next Gen car. If short tracks can be fixed by eliminating shifting, possibly upping horsepower and increasing tire falloff, then Richmond’s glory days may return.

Ultimately the racing product seen Sunday at Richmond is fascinating in a different way than the typical short track. Trading paint and torn fenders are replaced with calculators and crew chiefs mapping tire life cycles. What Sunday lacked in on-track drama was fulfilled by wide-varying strategies up and down pit road. No different than a defense-heavy football game, with tempered expectations strategy races are compelling to witness.

NASCAR is actively working to improve the short track package, trying to provide a more close-quarters field of competition. For the time being, races like last Sunday are adequate shows with winning tactics still very much up in the air. Two short track races remain in the 2023 season: the Bristol Night Race and the all-important Martinsville Round of 8 cutoff race. By the time Richmond returns in 2024, the Next Gen car will ideally have a radically new short track package, allowing for peak drama and entertainment.