Saturday Richmond Xfinity race: Start time, TV info, weather

The NASCAR Xfinity Series is ready to go short track racing for the first time in 2022.

Saturday’s race on the three-quarter mile Richmond Raceway is the first of just four short track races for the series this season.

It also starts the four-race Dash 4 Cash, where four Xfinity regulars compete among themselves for a $100,000 bonus in each race.

The four Dash drivers at Richmond are AJ Allmendinger, Austin Hill, Noah Gragson and Sam Mayer. They were the top four finishers among Xfinity regulars last week at Circuit of the Americas, with Allmendinger winning the race.

Among them, Gragson has had the most Dash success. He’s claimed the bonus in four of his previous six times eligible.

Saturday is Allmendinger’s fifth time eligible; he won the bonus last year at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Meanwhile, Hill and Mayer both enter their Dash debut.

START: Mike Goff will give the command to start engines at 1:38 p.m. … The green flag is scheduled to wave at 1:45 p.m.

PRERACE: Xfinity garage opens at 6:30 a.m. … Xfinity practice/qualifying begins at 8:30 a.m. on FS1 … Driver introductions are at 1 p.m. … U.S. Army Chaplain Lt. Col. Moose Myers will give the invocation at 1:30 p.m. … The Henrico County (Va.) Police Acoustic Blue Band will perform the National Anthem at 1:31 p.m.

DISTANCE: The race is 250 laps (187.5 miles) on the .75-mile short track.

STAGES: Stage 1 ends at Lap 75. Stage 2 ends at Lap 150.

TV/RADIO: FS1 will broadcast the race at 1:30 p.m. Pre-race coverage begins at 12:30 p.m. … Motor Racing Network’s radio coverage begins at 1 p.m. and also will stream at MRN.com; SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will carry the MRN broadcast.

STREAMING: FS1

FORECAST: The Weather Underground forecast calls for partly cloudy skies, a high of