RICHMOND, Va. — Hendrick Motorsports had three Chevrolets finish in the top seven Sunday night at Richmond Raceway, highlighted by Kyle Larson, who came home third after leading 144 laps of the .75-mile race track. Larson’s third top-five finish of the season came despite a near spin late in the race following contact with Bubba Wallace.
“Just got spun there down the frontstretch,” he said after the race. “Thankfully, I didn’t get turned all the way around and I only lost one or two spots there. My pit crew did a great job all night to gain those couple of spots back on pit road for us to lineup fourth and get one spot out of it.
“Proud of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevy team. I’m really, really happy about the execution all night long. My pit crew kept putting us in position to have a shot to win, so can’t say much more.”
Larson sits 14 markers behind points leader Martin Truex Jr.
Chase Elliott finished fifth and William Byron came home seventh.
“It was a grind today,” said Byron, who has won twice this season. “I think we really got the car handling well there at the end, we just needed a little bit more. I’m proud of my guys though for pushing through and turning it around when things weren’t going right early on. We’ll take what we learned tonight and build for next weekend.”
• Christopher Bell rallied from deep in the pack following a speeding penalty on a lap 294 pit stop. Bell brought the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota home sixth for his second straight top-10 finish after a runner-up effort at Circuit of The Americas.
“To come out of here with a top-10 is something that ended up being a really good day,” Bell said. “It was such a disappointing mistake on pit road. I was right there in the hunt, and it was going to be a race under the green flag there, so I’m disappointed, but happy to have a good showing for this Mobil 1 Camry. It stings to have a car that fast and make a mistake with it.”
• Josh Berry turned in his best finish of the season, but is still looking for a top-10 run after coming home 11th on Sunday night.
“It was a solid night. We had a really good car and a really good practice. We didn’t qualify like we should have, but we were able to come up through there and get some track position back,” said Berry, who led two laps aboard his Stewart-Haas Racing Ford. “It was just little things. We lost a little track position and got stuck in the back half of the top 10, but, all in all, it was a really good night. We have a lot to be proud of. It was a good points night and we’ll go to Martinsville.”
• Brad Keselowski and RFK Racing teammate Chris Buescher both finished in the top 10, with Keselowski eighth and Buecher one spot behind.
“That was respectable. I don’t think we had the speed to win the race, but we had the speed to run in that eighth to 12th range and we kind of did that most of the night,” Keselowski said. “We ended up executing at the end to get an eighth, so it was respectable. We took a little step backwards, but we’ll learn from it and be better.”
• The first 31 laps of the Toyota Owners 400 were run on wet-weather tires, marking the first time the rain tires had been utilized in a race at Richmond.
“It wasn’t that bad,” said Keselowski. “I wish we would have run a little bit longer. They threw the yellow around lap 30 or 35 and I was just starting to get it figured out.”
• Ty Gibbs finished 16th, ending a streak of five consecutive races in which he had finished in the top 10.