Joe Gibbs Racing Set To Continue Richmond Dominance

At almost every track on the NASCAR Sprint Cup circuit, there’s that one organization that tends to always fare well.

At Atlanta and Texas, it’s Roush-Fenway Racing. At Phoenix, it’s Hendrick Motorsports.

Richmond International Raceway, the site of the upcoming Heath Calhoun 400, is no different. With eight combined top five finishes over the course of the last four races at the track to go along with a Richmond sweep last season, it’s obvious who owns RIR: Joe Gibbs Racing.

With Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, and the young Joey Logano flying the colors for JGR, don’t expect that to change.

Busch, a threat to win at nearly every track in the series, has finished worse than fifth at RIR only twice in his career, and has finished on the lead lap every time.

Oh, yeah, and he’s the defending champion of this race, too.

Not only has the driver of the No. 18 M&M’s Camry been stout at Richmond, he has built up quite a bit of momentum over the course of the last few races this season.

Busch has finished ninth or better in his last three Cup Races and has led a total of 135 laps in that span.

These recent runs have vaulted him up to fifth in the Sprint Cup standings and have him looking like the championship contender he was in 2008.

In other words, Busch is knocking on the door of his first win this season and it’s only a matter of time before it opens. What better place to kick that door in than the site of one of his four wins in 2009?

Busch’s crew chief Dave Rogers is still looking for that elusive first win on top of a Sprint Cup pit box. While he has received criticism for his recent late race strategy, which likely cost Busch a top five finish at Martinsville and a win at Phoenix, he seems to be getting a better grasp of the new COT.

He should also be praised for the way he kept Busch, who often becomes somewhat of a hothead when the car isn’t to his liking, interested in the race at Texas after Busch wanted to take the car to garage to work on it. Under Rogers’ leadership, they were able to salvage a third place finish at TMS.

This could easily be the weekend Rogers finally earns his first Cup Series trophy.

While the No. 18 team has been stringing together good finishes of late, the No. 20 Home Depot Camry driven by Joey Logano has been anything but consistent.

After finishing 20^th in the Daytona 500, Logano has been on a roller coaster ride consisting of either two top ten finishes in a row or two finishes of 27^th or worse. This inconsistency has left the No. 20 team outside the Chase for the Sprint Cup cutoff at 16^th place in the standings.

However, there is reason to believe he’ll get back on the right track at RIR.

Logano finished 28^th and 36^th at Texas and Talladega respectively, which could be looked at as a momentum killer. However, given his recent pattern, it’s almost a guarantee that Logano will score at least a top ten this weekend.

Last year, his rookie season, Logano finished respectably in the top twenty in both races at RIR. He finished 19^th in the spring and 14^th in the fall and completed every lap. Given Logano’s improvement from where he was at this point in time last year– 33^rd in points and looking like a fish out of water in the Cup cars–to where he is now, his first top ten at Richmond may happen this weekend.

Logano certainly has the right man on the pit box to guide him there. Greg Zipadelli, crew chief on the No. 20 car, won his first career race as a crew chief at Richmond in 1999 with Tony Stewart in the driver’s seat.

The combo of Zipadelli and Stewart would win two more races at Richmond and ended their tenure together at JGR with three straight finishes of fourth or better at the circuit.

While Logano and Zipadelli could make for a deadly combo this weekend, no driver has been more dominant in recent history at Richmond than Denny Hamlin in the No. 11 FedEx Camry.

Hamlin, who ended up celebrating in Victory Lane the last time the Cup Series came to Richmond, has led at least 148 laps in the three of the past four races at the track.

He has also only finished worse than 15^th at Richmond once in his career. That was in the spring of 2008 when, after leading 381 laps from the pole, the No.11 car cut a tire down and lost three laps, eventually settling for a disappointing 24^th place finish.

Hamlin, though born in Tampa, Florida, considers Richmond to be his home track. That could easily be why he runs so well there. He even went so far as to declare over the radio after taking the checkered flag last fall, “This is my house.”

Indeed, it is his house, and if crew chief Mike Ford gives him the car he needs, that won't change. Not even a little thing like a recently rebuilt knee will keep Hamlin from being a contender this weekend.

After winning at Martinsville a month ago, Hamlin had surgery to repair the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Two weeks later at Phoenix, it was obviously bothering him. He braved the pain on top of a poor handling race car and completed all but two laps, finishing 30^th.

Many critics believed that running the full race had been a mistake and that he should have given up the car to back-up driver Casey Mears. However, in his post-race interviews, Hamlin was defiant, saying, "I wasn't going to give up on (my teammates). I wasn’t going to lay down on them."

The following weekend at Texas, all of his critics, including this writer, owed him an apology. Hamlin led the final 12 laps on the way to scoring his first career victory in the Lone Star State.

At Talladega, he backed that finish up, leading 17 laps and finishing fourth.

So, now that the ACL is officially a non-factor, it should be expected that Hamlin, along with his teammates, will continue to dominate under the lights at Richmond.

It’s a good thing Joe Gibbs Racing has some of the best looking cars in the sport.

We’re going to see a lot of them at the front Saturday night.