MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Aug. 11, 2025) – Richmond was once defined by its tobacco warehouses and cigarette factories, but today, Virginia’s capital city is a financial and technical hub. Historic, industrial sections have been repurposed into lofts, offices and innovation centers, blending a manufacturing heritage with a knowledge-based economy.
Richmond Raceway, the .75-mile oval that plays host to this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race, is located just five miles away from the Virginia State Capitol, and the track is a microcosm of the city’s reinvention.
Since hosting its first Cup Series race in 1953, the track has evolved. It began as a half-mile dirt oval, transitioned in 1968 to a paved, .625-mile oval, and then underwent a massive reconfiguration in 1988 that created its current, D-shaped layout.
The racetrack, like the city, operates on a knowledge-based economy. Drivers and teams split hairs to find advantages in a thousandth of an inch that, ultimately, shed thousandths of a second off lap times.
How can so little mean so much? In last year’s Cup Series race at Richmond, the difference between the fastest qualifier and the last-place qualifier was .339 of a second. And toward the sharp end of the spear, just .139 of a second separated the 20th-place driver from pole-winner Denny Hamlin.
“Everything matters. The field is so tight everywhere we go that nothing can be overlooked,” said Cody Ware, driver of the No. 51 Arrowhead Brass Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Rick Ware Racing.
“With only 25 minutes of practice before just two laps of qualifying, you don’t have much time for trial and error. You need to maximize your time, so the prep work you put in beforehand, especially on the sim and what you see and feel as a driver, and what the team builds into the setup, is crucial.”
At the Cup Series’ last oval race – Aug. 3 at Iowa Speedway in Newton – Ware immediately felt comfortable when he whipped his No. 51 machine around the .875-mile oval. He was the fastest Ford driver at the end of his group’s practice session.
With Iowa having a similar D-shaped design to Richmond, Ware eyes Richmond with optimism.
“We’re going into Richmond with optimism – realistic optimism. How we approached Iowa is how we’re approaching Richmond,” Ware said.
The Cup Series race at Iowa was Ware’s first start at the track, and despite having four prior Cup Series starts at Richmond, the 29-year-old is treating Saturday night’s race as if it’s his first time in the Commonwealth.
“In my head, I’m treating this weekend like it’s my first time going to Richmond,” Ware said. “I hate to say it, but there’s not anything productive for me to glean from looking back on the past at Richmond. Wiping the slate clean and approaching it with a new perspective is the best approach. Iowa forced us to do it that way, and it worked. So Richmond is going to be as straightforward as Iowa – extract speed from the car and make 
the most out of the weekend.”
Richmond is a unique short track. Like all short tracks, it features close quarters and requires heavy braking with controlled use of the throttle. But it also rewards smoothness, as Richmond is a momentum track, akin to intermediate-style ovals.
“It’s a difficult racetrack because you have two corners that are wildly different. Finding a rhythm there is very tough,” Ware said.
“Going into turn one, you’ve got a lot of banking holding you into the corner. Then as you’re coming off the corner and getting down to the back straightaway, you transition onto the flat pretty aggressively. Your entry into turn three is completely different. It’s very flat, not a whole lot of banking. You’re braking very early and lifting very early because you can’t carry speed into the corner like you can in turn one. You don’t have that grip and that banking to hold you into the corner.”
The Cup Series arrives in Richmond after racing on an entirely different layout – the 2.45-mile, seven-turn Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International road course. Yet despite the markedly different discipline, Ware’s time at The Glen will aid his efforts at Richmond.
“Through the road-course races we’ve run this year, I’ve learned how important throttle management is in these Cup cars,” Ware said. “That understanding, along with what we applied at Iowa, is all going to correlate to Richmond. If there was ever a time where we can have a successful run at Richmond, this is it.”
Ware will put his theory to the test on Friday at 4:30 p.m. EDT when practice begins, followed shortly afterward by qualifying at 5:40 p.m. TruTV and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide live coverage of both. The race goes green on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. EDT with flag-to-flag coverage delivered by USA and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
About Rick Ware Racing:
Rick Ware has been a motorsports mainstay for more than 40 years. It began at age 6 when the third-generation racer began his driving career and has since spanned four wheels and two wheels on both asphalt and dirt. Competing in the SCCA Trans Am Series and other road-racing divisions led Ware to NASCAR in the early 1980s, where he finished third in his NASCAR debut – the 1983 Warner W. Hodgdon 300 NASCAR Grand American race at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway. More than a decade later, injuries would force Ware out of the driver’s seat and into full-time team ownership. In 1995, Rick Ware Racing was formed, and with his wife Lisa by his side, Ware has since built his eponymous organization into an entity that competes full-time in the elite NASCAR Cup Series while simultaneously campaigning successful teams in the Top Fuel class of the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, Progressive American Flat Track, FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX) and zMAX CARS Tour.