NASCAR is taking things to the short track on Sunday. The drivers will compete at Richmond Raceway in Martinsville, Virginia for the 2023 Toyota Owners 400. The race will start at 3:30 p.m. ET and air on FS1 as well as the Fox Sports App.
Denny Hamlin has yet to win a NASCAR Cup Series race this year but has had a solid start to the season. The 42-year-old is in 14th place in the Cup Series standings and loves competing at Richmond Raceway, winning at the track in 2009, 2019, 2016 and 2022. After winning last year’s race, Hamling talked about what it took to earn a big victory.
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“Yeah, just great strategy there. Just drove as hard as I could,” he said, per NBC Sports. “Just so proud of this whole FedEx Camry team, man, just never giving up. There was no doubt in my mind, maybe just a little, but they got this car right there towards the end. Wow, unbelievable. … We needed a data point, something, a good run to kind of balance ourselves on other tracks. Obviously, I think we got it here.”
Tyler Reddick is coming off his first win of the season, claiming first place at the Circuit of The Americas last week. While he has not finished better than 11th in five starts at Richmond Raceway, he does come into the race with a lot of momentum and has a chance to go on a big run.
“I honestly wasn’t doing the best job on those restarts,” Reddick said about the challenges of last week’s race. “Few of the times giving up one, two spots. All but that very last one I’m having to battle for position down into the S’s, which is a very tricky area of the racetrack, considering track limits, all those things. One bump, one thing goes wrong, you might be getting penalized. Definitely putting ourselves at risk there.
“If I have one thing looking at the whole weekend I wish I could have done better would have been qualifying and cleaned up those restarts a little bit. Yeah, there is things to learn, for sure. But it all went really well. The last one got off of turn one without any real threats.”
