Joey Logano wins at Richmond and claims his second victory in four races

Joey Logano won the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway, his second victory in the last four races, and with that moved up to ninth place in the overall standings of the NASCAR Cup Series, having been 20th just six races ago. He secured it with a battle against Chase Briscoe that was decided on pit road, not on the track, and left the two cars separated by less than half a second at the finish.

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Briscoe had led 171 laps, the most of the night, in the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Logano regained the lead during the tire change pit stops, with 25 laps remaining, and from there held off Briscoe's pressure to the checkered flag. The difference was explained by Briscoe himself after climbing out of the car: a brake issue late in the race took away the margin he needed just when he needed it most to respond. For Joe Gibbs Racing, the runner-up finish had extra value—it was Briscoe's first top-ten result on a short track on the schedule, and with it, he locked up his spot in the Chase.

That combination—Logano's rise and Briscoe's secured playoff berth—moved a significant portion of the standings from top to bottom. Austin Cindric, Logano's teammate at Team Penske, finished third and with that result moved right to the cutoff line for the 16 spots that will determine the title when the Chase begins at Darlington in three weeks. Denny Hamlin, who remains the championship leader, finished fourth and extended his lead to 115 points over Ryan Blaney, who had started from pole and won stage 1, but finished 13th. Despite that result, Blaney moved up to second in the overall standings, ahead of Ty Gibbs, who dropped to third. Chase Elliott finished fifth, his first top-ten result in ten races, and that result was enough both to secure his Chase spot and to move up one position in the standings.

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With Richmond in the books, there are now seven drivers with their spots locked in among the 16: Hamlin, Blaney, Ty Gibbs, Tyler Reddick, Briscoe, Elliott, and Christopher Bell, although the latter dropped one position despite having his ticket secured. There are two races remaining, at New Hampshire and Daytona, to complete that list, and Shane van Gisbergen currently occupies the last available spot, with a 50-point margin over Ryan Preece and 63 over his teammate Ross Chastain.

Tyler Reddick arrived at Richmond still processing what Iowa had cost him two weeks earlier, when he lost control of his car on lap four and sent Erik Jones' Toyota into the wall. That crash dropped him from second to fourth in the overall standings. At the time, he acknowledged the error and apologized, aware that he had also affected a teammate's Chase chances. At Richmond, he finished 11th, a result that allowed him to keep fourth place but did not prevent the gap to Hamlin from growing to 138 points, larger than it had been at the time of the crash. The short track was not the place to make up ground, though it also didn't let the gap widen further.

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For Kyle Larson, on the other hand, Richmond served as a break from a streak he had been carrying for a month, with incidents at Chicagoland, Atlanta, North Wilkesboro, and Iowa itself, where he finished 18 laps down after a crash with his teammate Alex Bowman. The sixth-place finish at Richmond was his first trouble-free weekend in that stretch and was enough to move him up two positions, to eighth in the overall standings, just as the championship begins to define who enters the Chase with margin and who does so by pushing the limit.

Logano attributed his team's turnaround to a conversation with his crew chief, Paul Wolfe, weeks earlier at Wilkesboro, when results were not going their way. "I told him that if I had the keys to the shop and my name on the door, I wouldn't know what to do differently," he recalled, and felt that the group stayed united in that moment rather than fracturing, which in his view explains the difference between the team that was running 20th two months ago and the one that won at Richmond. Wolfe agreed with that analysis from his side, saying the car had speed from practice and that the balance adjustments in the final stages ultimately tipped the race in their favor against Briscoe. Team Penske's vice president, Walt Czarnecki, added to that analysis the continuity of personnel within the organization, with mechanics and engineers who have been working together for years.

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The Cup Series continues the following Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway with the Dollar Tree 301, a race in which Blaney arrives as the defending winner and in which Reddick, Larson, and the rest of the Chase contenders will have one less race to sort out their numbers before Daytona.

Cook Out 400 2026

Pos	Nº	driver	team	brand	time
1	#22	Joey Logano	Team Penske	Ford	-
2	#19	Chase Briscoe	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	+0.39s
3	#2	Austin Cindric	Team Penske	Ford	+7.95s
4	#11	Denny Hamlin	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	+11.30s
5	#9	Chase Elliott	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	+13.70s
6	#5	Kyle Larson	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	+14.07s
7	#20	Christopher Bell	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	+15.18s
8	#21	Josh Berry	Wood Brothers Racing	Ford	+15.90s
9	#24	William Byron	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	+18.59s
10	#48	Alex Bowman	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	+20.96s
11	#45	Tyler Reddick	23XI Racing	Toyota	+22.49s
12	#1	Ross Chastain	Trackhouse Racing	Chevrolet	+1 vuelta
13	#12	Ryan Blaney	Team Penske	Ford	+1 vuelta
14	#97	Shane Van Gisbergen	Trackhouse Racing	Chevrolet	+1 vuelta
15	#54	Ty Gibbs	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	+1 vuelta
16	#7	Daniel Suarez	Spire Motorsports	Chevrolet	+1 vuelta
17	#60	Ryan Preece	RFK Racing	Ford	+2 vueltas
18	#4	Noah Gragson	Front Row Motorsports	Ford	+2 vueltas
19	#3	Austin Dillon	Richard Childress Racing	Chevrolet	+2 vueltas
20	#23	Bubba Wallace	23XI Racing	Toyota	+2 vueltas
21	#17	Chris Buescher	RFK Racing	Ford	+2 vueltas
22	#42	John Hunter Nemechek	Legacy Motor Club	Toyota	+2 vueltas
23	#33	Austin Hill(i)	Richard Childress Racing	Chevrolet	+3 vueltas
24	#35	Riley Herbst	23XI Racing	Toyota	+3 vueltas
25	#88	Connor Zilisch #	Trackhouse Racing	Chevrolet	+3 vueltas
26	#6	Brad Keselowski	RFK Racing	Ford	+3 vueltas
27	#43	Erik Jones	Legacy Motor Club	Toyota	+4 vueltas
28	#71	Michael McDowell	Spire Motorsports	Chevrolet	+4 vueltas
29	#41	Cole Custer	Haas Factory Team	Chevrolet	+4 vueltas
30	#34	Todd Gilliland	Front Row Motorsports	Ford	+4 vueltas
31	#47	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	HYAK Motorsports	Chevrolet	+4 vueltas
32	#10	Ty Dillon	Kaulig Racing	Chevrolet	+6 vueltas
33	#16	AJ Allmendinger	Kaulig Racing	Chevrolet	+6 vueltas
34	#51	Cody Ware	Rick Ware Racing	Chevrolet	+8 vueltas
35	#66	* Josh Bilicki(i)	Garage 66	Ford	+9 vueltas
36	#38	Zane Smith	Front Row Motorsports	Ford	+34 vueltas
37	#77	Carson Hocevar	Spire Motorsports	Chevrolet	+121 vueltas