Breaking It Down: Richmond’s Tire Strategy Shakeup

The Next Gen car has caused alterations in so many teams' gameplans, as was evident in tire strategy this past Sunday at Richmond

Racing is known as the world’s fastest chess match due to the strategy and split-second decisions that keeps fans on their toes. Yet, under the right circumstances, the race-winning moves are not made on the track by the driver, but instead by the crew chief on pit road.

This was the case in Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway, as Denny Hamlin and his crew chief Chirs Gabehart employed a daring tire strategy that allowed them to sneak away with the win in the closing laps.

For the bulk of the final stage, William Byron was set to run away with the victory. With such a commanding lead, it appeared as though only a caution could get between Bryon and victory. Or so it seemed.

While the majority of the field had enough fuel to race to the end after their second pit stops of the final stage around lap 310, Hamlin and Gabehart still planned to make an additional third stop later on in the run for tires.

They made their move with 48 laps to go, as Hamlin surrendered his second-place running position to pit for tires under green. While many others joined Hamlin in his strategy, Byron did not. This left Hamlin facing a daunting one-lap deficit, with limited laps remaining to take advantage of his four fresh Goodyears.

The move was incredibly risky. If a caution came out at any point during the time Hamlin was a lap down, his strategy would have been ruined.

If it were not for the Richmond’s reputation for calm racing and long green flag runs, there’s a strong chance that the split approaches to strategy in the final stage would not have even crossed the minds of Gabehart and other crew chiefs.

Yet given Richmond’s track record, Gabehart had all the indication he needed to make the gutsy late-race call and it paid off big time.

The tire fall off was just significant enough to give Hamlin the advantage he needed to run Byron down rapidly. Lap by lap, Hamlin gained over a second on Byron. As the laps wound down, pressure began to mount for Byron as the No. 11 Camry that just got its lap back minutes earlier was now charging hard in his rear-view mirror.

With five laps to go, Byron was a sitting duck. Hamlin and his 42-lap fresher tires made quick work of the No. 24 Chevy and set his sights on the checkered flag. He led the final four laps en route to his and Toyota’s first victory of the year, which could not come at a better time after both have struggled early on in the Gen 7 era.

After the race, Hamlin credited his crew chief, saying, “I just rely on the crew chief (Chris Gabehart) and his information to me says we are going to be racing this guy and this guy. As long as you run this pace and do everything you can in traffic, you’ve got a great shot to win. I don’t pay attention to where we were or anything. He told me where the leaders were. I just drove the car as smooth as I could.”

Gabehart had the strategy down to a science. With Hamlin nearly running out of time to catch Byron, the timing had to be precise. If Gabehart had Hamlin pit too early, the advantage of fresher tires would not have been as strong and if he called the pit stop too late, they would have run out of laps to catch Byron. The level of intricacy that goes into these strategy calls can often go overlooked, but by breaking it down, one can see just how nuanced a race-winning strategy can be.

Since the conception of stage-racing, strategy-dominant races are few and far between. Even then, they are typically fuel mileage races more than anything.

Yet, Sunday’s race in Richmond was a unique display of fast-paced, calculated risk-taking that turned a relatively uneventful race into a down-to-the-wire nail-biter. It exemplified the beauty of NASCAR’s variability, strategy, teamwork, and endurance and showed how each race can unexpectedly provide a rare instance that exposes fans to a whole new aspect of the sport’s entertainment value.