NXS: Denny Hamlin Dominates ToyotaCare 250 at Richmond International Raceway

Leading 248 of 250 laps, Denny Hamlin would dominate the ToyotaCare 250 at Richmond International Raceway for his first XFINITY victory of the season at his hometown track.

“Unbelievable,” he said. “Big weekend for Hisense. I thank them for joining our spot and joining XFINITY. It’s a big weekend, but one thing that we have to think about is Steve Brynes and his family. 100^th win for Toyota – that’s a big win. It’s a big weekend for everyone and glad to be working with Wheels again. He put a rocket ship underneath us this week.”

It marks the second win for first-year crew chief Mike Wheeler, who won earlier this year with Erik Jones at Texas Motor Speedway.

Joey Logano would finish second after dominating last weekend’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

“He was just fast all weekend long,” he commented. “Now I know what it feels like to be on the other end of it. I thought he was really fast in practice and it carried over to the race. I could hang with him at the beginning, barely, and then off he’d go. Wasn’t fast enough – plain and simple.”

Regan Smith bounced back from his mechanical problems last week to finish third, saying that his car was good on the long runs.

“I was really confident on the drive up off the corner,” he added. “Jason and the guys have been working hard, giving us good speed every week. We just got to keep capitalizing on that every week.”

Jones finished fourth, with Chase Elliott rounding out the top-five.

“We just couldn’t turn the center like we needed to late in the run, and when you do that here, it creates bad drive off and creates a problem,” he said. “That’s all I had. we’ll try and get a little better. I think this weekend was a plus for us and we’ve ran better than we have. It’s a step in the right direction.”

Rookie Daniel Saurez kept the positive momentum rolling en route to finishing sixth, followed by Brian Scott, Austin Dillon, Ty Dillon and Landon Cassill. Ty now leads Elliott by eight points. Chris Buescher, who entered the weekend tied with Dillon, finished 20th to slip back to third in points.

There was a scary moment under a lap 111 caution when a huge fire broke out while the No. 62 team was refueling Brendan Gaughan’s car. The fueling mechanism failed to work accordingly. Rear tire changer Anthony O’Brien, along with another crew member for Gaughan’s team and a crew member from Eric McClure’s team were transported to hospital.