It was a good weekend to have the biggest field of the year so far. 25 players, including 6 rookies, enjoyed a venerable scoring bonanza this past weekend at Richmond. How about an average score of 192.24 points across the year's biggest field? And if it wasn't for Ryan Blaney, that average would have been even higher. 9 of the 25 scored 200 or higher. To put that in perspective, going into Richmond there had been 7 scores above 200 in all 2024 races combined. So hopefully everybody's feeling pretty good about themselves and their chances at scoring the Richmond victory. There were certainly enough contenders for the win. It wasn't another tie for the win, but there was a 4 way tie for 2nd place. That means the whole top 5 scored playoff points and at least 9 bonus points, including a certain db512 who was advanced 9 bonus points earlier in the season. This week's winner would have finished behind that 4 way tie were it not for a correct pick of Chandler Smith to win the Xfinity. This I'm very thankful for because I don't want to imagine a 4 way tie for the win. In 17 years that's never happened before! The owner of said winning pick, becoming the 7th different winner in 7 races this year, was
Hendrick9Fan who took the win over the highly congested tie for 2nd place by 5 points. The runner up quartet consisted of Ackbarfan, Highbank, Mariner and the ever consistent db512 who notches yet another top 5 finish.
Congrats to
@Hendrick9Fan on the win!
The entire top 3 in the points all tied for 2nd with identical scores so not much movement at the top of the standings. db512 leads the field by 49 points. Mariner's still in 2nd place followed by Ackbarfan in 3rd place. These two know each other quite well from last year's rookie battle. Speaking of rookies, 6 rookies entered Richmond but none of them finished in the top 10. Stueylouey was the highest finishing rookie in 11th place. Good to see that Nascar20 returned for a 2nd start after last week's debut at COTA. The finishes will improve with time. Meanwhile Kevmire leads the rookie battle by 57 over the aforementioned Stueylouie, and 108 points over QBoi.
That'll do it from Richmond. Let's see how the full results shook out.
Race Results
Current Standings
Rookie Standings
Big thanks to all 25 of you who made Richmond the biggest field of 2024 so far. Hope to see you all back and hopefully more this coming weekend for the 2nd half of the Commonwealth double header at the paper clip in Martinsville!