The 2010 Air Guard 400 was a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stock car race that was held on September 11, 2010 at Richmond International Raceway in Richmond, Virginia. Contested over 400 laps, it was the twenty-sixth and final race leading into the Chase for the Sprint Cup in the 2010 Sprint Cup Series season. Denny Hamlin won the race for the Joe Gibbs Racing team; his teammate, Kyle Busch, finished second while Jimmie Johnson clinched third. Carl Edwards won the pole position, holding the lead until lap 51 when Johnson passed him. Hamlin, however, was the dominant driver for most of the race, taking the lead on lap 110 and leading the most laps throughout the race (251). There were three cautions and fourteen lead changes among six different drivers throughout the course of the race. It was Hamlin's sixth win of the season and the fifteenth of his career. The result of having six wins moved him into first in the Drivers' Championship, ten points ahead of Johnson and thirty ahead of Kevin Harvick to begin the 2010 Chase for the Sprint Cup. Chevrolet maintained its lead in the Manufacturers' Championship, twenty-nine ahead of Toyota and sixty-eight ahead of Ford, with ten races remaining in the season. A total of 95,000 people attended the race, while 5.288 million watched it live on television. Report Background Richmond International Raceway is one of five short tracks to hold NASCAR races; the others are Bristol Motor Speedway, Dover International Speedway, Martinsville Speedway, and Phoenix International Raceway. The NASCAR race makes use of the track's standard configuration, a four-turn short track oval that is long. The track's turns are banked at fourteen degrees; the front stretch, the location of the finish line, is banked at eight degrees while the back stretch has two degrees of banking. Before the race, Kevin Harvick led the Drivers' Championship with 3,585 points, and Jeff Gordon followed in second with 3,366 points. Kyle Busch was third in the Drivers' Championship with 3,325 points, Tony Stewart was fourth with 3,302 points, and Carl Edwards was fifth with 3,288 points. Five additional drivers had clinched spots in the Chase—in order of placement, Jeff Burton, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth, and Denny Hamlin. Greg Biffle, who was 11th in the standings with 3,110 points, needed only a finish of 42nd place in the race to secure his spot in the