Body.
Click here to visit the Motorsports page for all the latest news and information.
RICHMOND -- Richard Petty Motorsports Ford driver Kasey Kahne had a couple of bumping incidents with Joey Logano during Saturday night’s Heath Calhoun 400 at Richmond International Raceway, and Kahne wasn’t too happy about any of it.
“We were fighting for the lucky dog [free pass after a caution],” Kahne said. “At that point, no cautions came out, so all he did was slow us both down by holding me down. Jeff Gordon put a straightaway on us in like five laps, and he wasn’t that much faster than us at that point.
“I don’t really know what Logano was thinking out there.”
Kahne finished 21st but gained a spot to 22nd in the Sprint Cup standings.
Logano was 16th in the race.
• Roush Fenway Racing Ford driver David Ragan finished 24th after a tough night of racing that included a late-race spin in Turn 1.
“We just unloaded poorly, and our UPS team just had to fight and claw all through practice and the race,” Ragan said. “We made our car better throughout the night, but when you unload that far off, it’s just tough to overcome.
“On nights like this you can sometimes catch a break and finish around 15th, but if you don’t, then you’re going to finish in the 20s. Tonight, we just didn’t catch any lucky breaks. We’ve got some work to do to get up and running where we need to be.”
• AJ Allmendinger fought a loose condition in his Richard Petty Motorsports Ford most of the evening but managed a 17th-place run.
“I am proud of the pit crew,” Allmendinger said. “They fought hard. At a point I thought we had it really good, and then at another point the track got loose and we were just a little bit off.
“I was hoping to get a little better finish out of that, but, all in all, for as much as I was complaining and as much as I was hanging on, 17th is respectable.”
• How tough was the racing on a hot Saturday night at Richmond?
“That’s the longest, hardest night I’ve ever had, I think, in any form of racing,” said Ford driver Kevin Conway. “It was kind of miserable, but we learned a whole lot and made some massive, massive adjustments on the car and got it really a lot better there at the end, but those long green runs never gave us a chance to work on it.”
Conway, a rookie, finished 37th.
• Denny Hamlin, a Virginia native, finished 11th at one of his “home” tracks and rolled out of the speedway late Saturday night in a frustrated mood.
“I should be able to run top 10 here running around on my feet,” Hamlin said. “For us to finish where we did—pretty disappointing.”
Hamlin said he had a “bad” car. “Our car just wouldn’t go on restarts. It was bottoming out too bad. I just couldn’t go anywhere. It’s a shame. I know we’re better than that. I know I’m better than that. It was a tough day.”
• The weather was warm and the track was hot, circumstances that are likely to be duplicated when the tour moves on to Darlington Raceway in South Carolina next weekend.
“I think we got some good notes from Richmond that we can apply to Darlington,” said Brad Keselowski, who finished 14th. “I’m sure we’ll take a look at our corner speed and drive-off. Darlington is a different monster, real fast. We’ll just try and unload with a fast car and work on it from there all weekend.”