Riggs

RICHMOND, Va. -- With just one slip Friday night in Richmond, the chase for the 2003 NASCAR Busch Series driver's championship could be turned upside down. And that's what's so exciting about the closest battle in the division's history.

Scott Riggs leads all comers, but by the slimmest of margins. David Green is just 19 points behind Riggs, with the rest of the top-five drivers a bit further back but still crammed tightly together. Brian Vickers won last weekend's Winn-Dixie 200 at Darlington Raceway, to move to third in the standings. He's 67 points behind first place.

Jason Keller is 70 points down, with Ron Hornaday rounding out the top five, and trailing Riggs by a mere 79 points. Bobby Hamilton Jr. is in sixth place in the standings, 321 points down. Shane Hmiel, Johnny Sauter, Scott Wimmer and Kasey Kahne make up the rest of the top 10 in points.

Hmiel, for one, expects to have a good day at Richmond. He has yet to finish out of the top-10 this year in four short track races -- the only Busch driver to accomplish that feat this year -- and had finished fourth in the last two, at Indianapolis Raceway Park and Bristol Motor Speedway.

"I look forward to racing at Richmond more than any other track on the circuit," said Hmiel, who qualified fourth and finished eighth in Richmond's spring event. "It's my favorite track. Night racing is a blast, and there are two grooves that come into play at RIR. We're taking the same car that ran so well at IRP to Richmond, so we're really excited about our chances."

And while Richmond is just a ¾-mile oval, it's not necessarily your typical short track.

"The track is a lot faster than most people realize," said defending Busch Series champion Greg Biffle. "You're hauling when you're coming down the frontstretch and enter into Turn 1. What makes the track tough is that Turn 2 is so tight. You carry all that speed through the corners and then the wall is right there in front of you.

"It can get pretty hairy when you get side-by-side going through that end of the track."

Heading into Richmond, there are nine races to go in the 2003 NASCAR Busch Series season. At this point in the 1992 campaign, the year the championship came down to the smallest margin in the division's history, Joe Nemechek led Todd Bodine by 188 points. In the end, Nemechek edged Bobby Labonte by only three points in the season's final race at Hickory Motor Speedway.

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