The rain won Saturday night (4/25) as NASCAR had to postpone the race at Richmond International Raceway. Sunday afternoon (4/26) it was Kurt Bush prevailing for the Toyota Owners 400 win.

The hard rains that moved across Virginia Saturday completly soaked the three-quarter-mile track in Richmond forcing NASCAR to re-schedule the Sprint Cup race scheduled to run under the lights to the next day in the afternoon.

This delay in competition presented two new challenges for the teams and drivers. The first challenge being that they had to think about the set-up on their cars for daytime racing instead of night racing. The second challenge would be that the rain washed all the rubber that was on the track off and gave the drivers a “green track” to deal with starting the race.

Because of the second challenge NASCAR announced they would issue a competition caution at lap 50 of the 400 lap Toyota Owners 400 so that teams could get a look at tire ware on the cars. This caution would be the first of a total of eight yellow flag periods during the race. That is not a huge number of cautions when NASCAR races on a short track.

Joey Logano started the race from the pole position and led the first 94 laps. However, as has happened multiple times this season, Joey began fading as the race moved into the middle portion of the race.

Kurt Busch moved his #41 Chevrolet to the front of the field on lap 95 and was able to keep it there for a race high 291 laps in the race. There were only three other drivers to take the lead of the race through the afternoon.

While there were a few late race caution periods that gave other drivers the chance to steal the lead from Kurt, he was able to maintain the lead position through each re-start and lead the final 47 laps to capture his first win of the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.

Kevin Harvick continued his amazing championship defending season with another second place finish. Jimmie Johnson and Jamie McMurray finished in third and fourth places respectively. Joey Logano was able to battle back near the end of the race to grab the fifth finishing position. See the complete race results for the Toyota Owners 400 here.

The top five in the point standings did not change following the NASCAR race at Richmond International Raceway. Kevin Harvick remains the leader followed by Joey Logano, Martin Truex Jr., Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski in that order. See the complete NASCAR Sprint Cup point standings here.

Kurt Busch has moved onto the Chase Grid with the “all but guaranteed a spot” phrase added to his name with his win. See how the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase Grid looks following Richmond here.

After back-to-back short track races, the NASCAR Sprint Cup series heads to the wide open racing of Talladega Superspeedway in the Geico 500 Sunday afternoon, May 3rd.

By: Buck Stevens