Richard Childress Racing driver, Brian Scott, had only led 38 laps in his Nationwide Series career before the Virginia 529 College Savings 250 at Richmond International Raceway.
Tonight, however, he dominated, leading 240 of 250 laps yet still came up short due to a controversial late race restart. Eventual race winner Brad Keselowski, took the lead with ten laps to go, when it appeared to team owner Richard Childress that Keselowski beat Scott to the line. Childress asked his team over the radio, “The 22 beat us to the line, is somebody hollering about that?”
Later, on the last restart of the night with six laps to go, Keselowski hit the gas two car lengths before the restart line. Scott complained, but the complaint fell on deaf ears. No call was made, and Keselowski easily drove to victory in the Nationwide Series’ 1,000th race.
After the race, Scott said he was mostly mad at himself for not understanding the restart rules. When asked to ignore the controversy and focus on the first 239 laps of the race, Scott replied, “Fun, we had a great car and when you have a car like that it’s easy to lead that many laps. I haven’t had a car that good in my Nationwide career, I have had a couple of them in the truck series and that’s something to be proud of. We had a great showing here tonight, a great race. Um, you know Richmond, me and Richmond have a bittersweet love affair. Looking at replays from last one, obviously there was a pretty infamous incident that happened after that and obviously even with all the laps led, to lose one like that, I still feel the same afterwards.”
Tonight’s win made number five on the season for Keselowski and number ten for his team, Penske Racing. Keselowski commented about the controversy with Scott saying, “Well, first off, Brian Scott did a tremendous job today. He has a lot to be proud of. If he keeps running like he is, he will win races. I think I just caught him off guard. The restart box is a zone and we went right at the start of it and didn’t give him a second to catch up. That probably wasn’t key to victory but it sure didn’t hurt.”
Sam Hornish extended the series points lead to 16 points over Austin Dillon. Third place Regan Smith edges a little closer and is now 26 behind leader Hornish with Elliott Sadler just points back in fourth.
The series now heads to Chicagoland Speedway on September 14 for the Dollar General 300.
