RICHMOND
Friday, August 15 – NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, 7:30 p.m. ET (FS1)
Saturday, August 16 – NASCAR Cup Series, 7:30 p.m. ET (USA)
The NASCAR Cup Series conducts its penultimate race of the regular season this weekend at Richmond Raceway, where three current Ford drivers (Chris Buescher, Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski) have at least one victory. In the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, which will run its regular season finale on Friday night, F-150 driver Ty Majeski is the defending race winner.
TWO TO GO IN REGULAR SEASON
Saturday night’s scheduled race at Richmond Raceway and next weekend’s event at Daytona International Speedway are all that remains of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series regular season. There are currently four Ford drivers who have secured spots in the playoff field – three-time and defending champion Joey Logano, 2023 series champion Ryan Blaney, Austin Cindric and Josh Berry. Chris Buescher holds a 34-point advantage over RFK Racing teammate Ryan Preece for the final berth, but a new winner would knock him below the cut line.
BLANEY CONTINUES TOP 10 ROLL
Ryan Blaney has had speed all season and that was evident again last weekend at Watkins Glen International, where he qualified on the pole, won a stage and finished sixth. That marked his fourth straight top 10 finish, dating back to an eighth-place run at Dover Speedway. In 17 series starts at Richmond Raceway, Blaney has one pole, which came in the spring of 2022, and a career best finish of seventh, which happened on that same weekend.
RICHMOND ONE OF LOGANO’S BEST
It would be easy to look at Joey Logano’s two career wins at Richmond and say it’s got to be one of his best tracks on the circuit, but the statistics provide further proof. In 31 career starts, Logano has 14 top 5 and 19 top 10 finishes, which gives him an average finish of 10.0. That’s his second-best average finish on tracks where he’s run more than 10 races and includes a current stretch that has seen him finish seventh or better in seven of the last nine Richmond races.. The only track where Logano has a better average finish is Las Vegas, where his four wins and 14 top-10 finishes in 24 starts works out to a 9.8 average finish.
JOEY LOGANO: “Richmond is my favorite track to go to. I love it. It is a great racetrack. It’s fun to race because you have so much tire fall off that you have to be smart in how you race there. It seems like in the past we have put together a really good Ford Mustang for Richmond. I look forward to being strong there.”
RYAN BLANEY: “Looking forward to getting to Richmond. It’s a unique place. Penske always seems to run well there, the 22 especially runs well there. I am just trying to take all the notes that Joey has. I wouldn’t say it is my strongest track. I seem to have struggled there all through my career with a couple of glimpses of hope, but it is a place that we continue to work really hard on. You try to get better everywhere but especially the places that you might not be as strong at as others. I look forward to it. I look forward to what the tire is like, how the track is, and Saturday night races are always
fun. Hopefully, it goes well for us as we gear up for the Playoffs. We just have to keep building momentum with the No. 12 Ford Mustang. That’s the biggest thing right now.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI: “We are really pumped. We ran so well in Iowa. We hope that success will carry over. I have won there a few times and we’ve had some good runs. A lot of positive thoughts going into the weekend.”
CHRIS BUESCHER: “I laugh about it now because we have had a lot of really good runs at Richmond and we have been able to win there. But it wasn’t that long ago that I wanted
to fill the place with dirt and build apartments on it. I didn’t care; just make it go away. It was a struggle. We are not there at this point. We are well beyond that. We are to a point that we can confidently say, wherever we are headed to, we are excited about the speed we believe we will have and the opportunity to win.”
AUSTIN CINDRIC: “Richmond is a fun place, and I think it’s a great place to have a night race. It gives short track vibes even though it’s not technically a very small Saturday
night short track. It has those same feelings. I like going there. It’s very much a rhythm racetrack and very important to get all your things right with strategy and [tire] fall off and track position. It’s a tricky place and it’s one of my favorites.”
RYAN PREECE: “I’m excited about Richmond. I am going to go run the modified there on Thursday and that will lead into Cup practice and qualifying on Friday and the Cup race on Saturday. We call it a short track but it’s a big short track. I like racing there. The last time I was there in a modified we won, and it would be nice to do that again. For me, racing the modified before the Cup race can be pretty good. But at the same time, it can be an absolute challenge. I am hoping the work put in will pay off.”
BUESCHER CLAIMS FIRST RICHMOND WIN
Chris Buescher claimed his third victory of the season by leading 53 of the final 54 laps when he took the checkered flag at Richmond Raceway on July 30, 2023. Despite that dominance, he had to endure a late-race caution that brought the field back to him with nine laps remaining, resulting in one final round of pit stops. Buescher’s crew got him out in the lead and, after choosing the inside line, was able to get away from Denny Hamlin on the restart with three laps to go to claim the win.
A PENSKE SEASON SWEEP
Thanks to Team Penske, Ford dominated the 2014 season at RR as both Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski made it to victory lane. Keselowski clinched the top seed for the ensuing Chase with a dominating performance that saw him lead all but 17 of the 400 laps, including the final 274 circuits. The win was his fourth of the season and marked the third time Ford swept both NCS races at the three-quarter-mile track, and the first since 1997. Logano won the first RR race after passing Matt Kenseth with four laps to go to claim his fifth career series victory.
KYLE PETTY’S FIRST WIN
The Wood Brothers have 101 all-time NASCAR Cup Series victories and many of those have been first-time winners. Kyle Petty was that man in the mid-1980s and on Feb. 23, 1986 found himself in the right place at the right time. Driving the No. 7 Ford for Glenn Wood – the car carried that number because of sponsor 7-Eleven – Petty was the beneficiary of an ongoing battle between Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt. After Waltrip passed Earnhardt to take the lead with two to go, Earnhardt made contact with Waltrip and both cars went spinning into the wall. Others got collected in the aftermath, but Petty was able to get through unscathed and took the checkered flag under caution for his first series triumph.
RICHMOND REPEAT FOR MAJESKI?
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series has its final regular season race on Friday night at Richmond Raceway and defending series champion Ty Majeski would like nothing better than to repeat his victory from a year ago. He ensured that this weekend would be a little less stressful after clinching a spot in the playoffs with a seventh place finish at Watkins Glen International last Friday. This marks the third straight season Majeski has reached the postseason with Ford and ThorSport Racing, and the fourth overall.
GARCIA AND RHODES ON THE BUBBLE
ThorSport teammates Jake Garcia and Ben Rhodes find themselves battling each other on the bubble going into the regular season finale. Garcia is 10th in the standings and holds the final playoff berth on points while Rhodes finds himself 11 points behind. A win by either would automatically put them in the field, but if there’s a new winner, both would likely be eliminated.
FORD NASCAR CUP SERIES WINNERS
AT RICHMOND
1957 – Paul Goldsmith
1959 – Tom Pistone and Cotton Owens
1960 – Speedy Thompson (2)
1963 – Ned Jarrett (2)
1965 – Junior Johnson (1)
1968 – David Pearson (1)
1969 – David Pearson (1)
1970 – James Hylton (1)
1979 – Bobby Allison (2)
1980 – Bobby Allison (2)
1981 – Benny Parsons (2)
1984 – Ricky Rudd (1)
1986 – Kyle Petty (1)
1988 – Davey Allison (2)
1990 – Mark Martin (1)
1992 – Bill Elliott (1)
1993 – Davey Allison (1)
1994 – Ernie Irvan (1)
1995 – Rusty Wallace (2)
1996 – Ernie Irvan (2)
1997 – Rusty Wallace and Dale Jarrett
1998 – Jeff Burton (2)
1999 – Dale Jarrett (1)
2001 – Ricky Rudd (2)
2002 – Matt Kenseth (2)
2005 – Kurt Busch (2)
2013 – Carl Edwards (2)
2014 – Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski
2017 – Joey Logano (1)
2020 – Brad Keselowski
2022 – Kevin Harvick (2)
2023 – Chris Buescher (2)
FORD NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES WINNERS AT RICHMOND
1999 – Greg Biffle
2000 – Rick Carelli
2020 – Grant Enfinger
2024 – Ty Majeski
The Ford Mustang, celebrating its 61st anniversary in 2025, is the world’s best selling sports car. It is also one of the planet’s most popular race cars. With Mustang-based race cars competing in international sports car competition (GT3 and GT4), NASCAR, NHRA, Formula Drift, in Australian Supercars, at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and in its own bespoke one-make series – Mustang Cup and Mustang Challenge – the platform has an unprecedented global reach. This weekend, 19 Mustang race cars are scheduled to race across all disciplines. Learn more at FordPerformance.com.
