The 2026 Black’s Tire 250 will light up Richmond Raceway on Friday night, kicking off at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time and streaming live on FS1.
It marks the third short‑flat‑track showdown of the season, sitting among the final two regular‑season events before the playoffs, and it carries a unique blend of tradition and fresh strategy.
Richmond’s 0.75‑mile concrete oval last hosted a Truck Series race in 2005, before the series made a celebrated comeback in 2020 after a fifteen‑year hiatus, and the track’s reputation for tight battles and unpredictable cautions still holds true.
Stage Structure and Scoring
The event is divided into three stages — 70 laps, another 70, and a final 110‑lap sprint — culminating in a 250‑lap marathon that awards 112.5 points for the fastest lap and 62.5 points for led laps, giving teams plenty of incentives to chase both speed and position.
Historical data shows that the eventual winner has started inside the top five in four of the last six Richmond outings, and has claimed the front‑row start in three of the most recent four races, underscoring the importance of qualifying performance.
Caution patterns have been fairly consistent, with six prior races producing a spread of four, eleven, three, four, nine and five caution periods, suggesting that strategy around pit road and stage breaks could be decisive.
Analysts are already mapping out DFS lineups, blending recent Richmond statistics, short‑flat‑track performance, practice session speeds and projected lap‑lead potential to pinpoint two or three dominant drivers who could yield roughly 160 points of dominator value.