Thanks to a late race caution Kyle Larson was able to capture the win at Richmond International Raceway Saturday night (9/9) as the 2017 Chase Grid was set to start NASCAR‘s playoffs.
The final race of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series regular season was really pretty uneventful as far as cautions go. While the drivers fought hard for every position from start to finish of the race, there were only five cautions for the first 397 laps of the 400 laps scheduled for the Richmond race.
Two of those caution periods were for the end of stages one and two of the race. Kyle Busch won stage 1 of the race while Martin Truex Jr. was the winner of Stage 2.
Martin Truex Jr. dominated the Federated Auto Parts 400 leading a race high 198 laps under the lights Saturday night. To give you an idea of the dominance, the next highest in laps led was Matt Kenseth with 89 laps out front.
Martin was cruising to what looked like would be his fifth regular season win of 2017 when a car that was multiple laps down brought out the race’s sixth caution flag on lap 398. That put the race in a green-white-checkered finish scenario and erased Martin’s lead.
All of the cars hit pit road for fresh tires for the re-start and it was Kyle Larson who won the race off pit road to take over the lead of the race and be the control car on the re-start. When the green flag waived Kyle was able to shoot out to the lead and held it as he took the white flag signifying the last last of the race.
After Kyle took the white flag the race’s seventh and final yellow flag waived to end the race under a caution period per NASCAR rule of the caution comes out after the leader takes the white flag. That gave Kyle Larson his fourth win of the 2017 regular season and some additional playoff points heading into The Chase.
Joey Logano needed to win the race to make The Chase and fell one spot short finishing in second place. Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch and Deny Hamlin finished in third through fifth places respectively and are all on the Chase Grid for the playoffs. See the complete results in the Federated Auto Parts 400 here.
While Martin Truex Jr. did not win his fifth race of the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series regular season at Richmond, he did leave the track as the winner of the newly created Regular Season Championship. Along with a trophy for the title comes additional playoff points for Martin. That makes Martin the #1 seed on the 2017 Chase Grid.
The points for the 16 Chase Grid drivers were re-set to 2000 and their playoff points were added to create the order that they are seeded to start The Chase. Below is your 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Chase Grid for the beginning of NASCAR’s playoffs.
The first race of the first round in the 2017 Chase for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Championship is Sunday, September 17th in the Tales of the Turtles 400 at Chicagoland Speedway.
By: Buck Stevens
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