2008 SPRINT CUP RACE 10: Crown Royal 400 @ Richmond

The tenth race of the year took the Cup drivers to Richmond International Raceway, the second night race of the year. Denny Hamlin took the pole for the race beating out Mark Martin in the #8 car. The race itself was clean until Carl Edwards tried forcing himself in a lane when there wasn't any room to get by the #96 of J.J. Yeley. That stacked up the field and caused Patrick Carpentier to get rear ended by his teammate Elliott Sadler sending Carpentier around and hitting the inside wall hard. The wreck collected several other people including Kurt Busch slamming into the #10 of Carpentier hard, Matt Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson, Regan Smith, David Gilliland, and many many more. Denny Hamlin in the meanwhile dominated the race setting the laps led record once held by Bill Elliott. Denny led 381 laps until he had a tire starting to go down late. Once Hamlin's car began to slow more and more, he decides to sit on the frontstretch to bring the caution out, no doubt trying to help his teammate Kyle Busch up front to have a shot at the leader Dale Jr. Well, soon after the restart, Dale Jr. got a good run on Kyle Busch, but Busch got him a lap later and at 3 to go, Junior and Busch were side by side off of Turn 2: Kyle low, Dale high. In Turn 3, Busch got into Junior spinning the #88 out. This allowed Clint Bowyer to scoot to the bottom to take over the lead. Bowyer was 3rd behind these guys before they got together. From my perspective, Kyle Busch DID wash up the racetrack, however Dale Jr. may have been hogging a bit much of the middle lane not allowing Busch any chance to get grip low. Putting 2 and 2 together, they touched and someone had to spinout, it happened to be Junior. Upon the green white checker finish, Clint Bowyer held off Kyle Busch to win his second career race, first of the year. Five Chevy's, two Toyota's, two Dodges, and one Ford registered Top 10s. This track would later be raced as the final race to get into the Chase.

The Top 10:
1. #07 Clint Bowyer (Chevrolet)
2. #18 Kyle Busch (Toyota)
3. #8 Mark Martin (Chevrolet)
4. #20 Tony Stewart (Toyota)
5. #1 Martin Truex Jr. (Chevrolet)
6. #12 Ryan Newman (Dodge)
7. #99 Carl Edwards (Ford)
8. #29 Kevin Harvick (Chevrolet)
9. #24 Jeff Gordon (Chevrolet)
10. #9 Kasey Kahne (Dodge)

Sidenote: Excluding Bowyer, six others scoring Top 10s won at Richmond in the past (Martin-1990, Stewart-1999/2001/2002, Newman-2003, Harvick-2006, Gordon-1996/2000, Kahne-2005)