Richard Petty says COTA ‘does not lend itself to a good cup race’

“I guess if you’d have been there, it’d have been worse than what it was on TV,” Petty said. “… That track does not lend itself to a good cup race. The track’s too long. If they shortened it up a little bit, it might be a little bit better, but you know like you said, we get to go back to Richmond [this Sunday]. At least if you are sitting in the grandstands, you’ll be able to see all the cars.”

The entirety of the 68 laps run at COTA were caution-free. William Byron, who sat on the pole, led 42-of-68 laps and picked up his second victory of the season and 12th overall in the Cup Series.

Denny Hamlin admits COTA was ‘not the most exciting’ race

Denny Hamlin, who won Stage 2 and finished P14, admitted on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast that the race wasn’t the most exciting.

“Not the most exciting, but I thought it was still a compelling race,” Hamlin said. “I thought that you had many stories, right? In the sense of, you know, the No. 24. Obviously, they start up front, and they led early on. And at that point, you know, when I rewatched the race, I’m thinking, you know, let’s just pretend I didn’t know the result. You’re like, ‘Yeah, well, let’s get this guy in traffic, and see what happens. Everyone’s cars fast out front. But what happens when he gets put in traffic?’ And he got in that situation. After Stage 2, he didn’t have a great restart or something happened on the restart, and he went back to P3 or P4, but then he — he drove back to the front.

“So I think the, probably the right guy, the right car won. Although you have an argument for Christopher Bell there. We’ll get into kind of where their day ended up. But I think that it was compelling. It wasn’t — there was never like, a huge lead.”