NASCAR Roars Through Richmond

Three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano led for 95 of the 400 laps at Richmond Raceway this weekend on his way to a narrow victory over Chase Briscoe in the Cook Out 400.

“Kind of a fun, back-and-forth battle. Had some strategy there, too. A typical Richmond race,” Logano said afterward. It’s the third time in his career that Logano has taken the checkered flag at Richmond Raceway.

NASCAR has been racing in the state capital since 1953, when Lee Petty won on a half-mile dirt track. That route was paved in 1968, and the track was reconfigured to its current layout in 1988. “Qualifying here is extremely, extremely technical,” Virginia native Denny Hamlin said this week. “I would say it’s probably the hardest to qualify to hit your marks.”

Yet Saturday night’s event was NASCAR’s only visit to Richmond this season. The city hosted two races every year beginning in 1958 but lost its second race after 2024. That weekend is now used for a race in Mexico City.

Before the schedule change was announced, Hamlin pointed the finger at a lack of fan support at the track. “If the fans turned out here and we sold out every race, then there would be two races,” the NASCAR Cup Series points leader said two years ago. “They’re going to do things that the fans want to participate in. What’s crazy is that it’s always one of our top five [ratings] markets that watch us on TV, but [they] don’t actually come to the racetrack itself.”

Attendance is trending up, however, with a full house on hand this weekend. “To sell out the Cook Out 400 for the second year in a row shows just how special Saturday night NASCAR racing is for our fans at Richmond Raceway,” track president Lori Collier Waran told WWBT.

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“We’re still committed to Richmond,” a NASCAR executive vice president told reporters in 2024. “It’s an important track, an important market, certainly, as we think about where our NASCAR fans are today. We’ve seen some exciting storylines certainly come out of that track over the past few years.”

Meanwhile, another Virginia track still holds two major races this year, and it will again host a pair in 2027. Next month, the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 will be held at Martinsville Speedway. It’s the third leg of the Virginia Triple Crown series. Kaden Honeycutt won the first race in June at South Boston Speedway, then Caden Kvapil took the second race at Langley Speedway last month.

On Nov. 1, Martinsville will host the Xfinity 500, the final race before the season-ending NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race in Miami. The track is known as “the paperclip” because of its unusual design: it’s a short track with hairpin corners that rewards strategy instead of simply celebrating raw engine power.

Overall, racing remains big business in the commonwealth. A study conducted for the Performance Racing Industry, a trade group, found that “motorsports generates $907.02 million in annual economic output, supports 5,555 jobs, provides $362.15 million in wages and benefits and contributes nearly $110 million in state and local taxes” in Virginia each year.

State Sen. Bill Stanley wants to protect that business. He started a caucus this year to promote and protect auto racing in Virginia. If lawmakers work together, “we cannot lose,” he said as the caucus was announced. One potential step would be to pass a “right-to-race” law that would allow tracks that had been operating before homes were built nearby to avoid noise lawsuits and continue to permit night racing.