Kevin Harvick picks Joe Gibbs Racing’s driver as favorite to win the 2025 Richmond NASCAR Cup race

As the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series schedule heads to Richmond Raceway, Kevin Harvick has shared his insights and predicted the winner of the 2025 Cook Out 400, which is set to take place this weekend. He picked a Joe Gibbs Racing driver to win Saturday’s (August 16) Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway.

On the latest episode of his ‘Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour’ podcast, the 2014 NASCAR Cup champion turned commentator and his co-hosts, Kaitlyn Vincie and Mamba Smith, dropped their winner’s prediction for this week’s Richmond race.

Kevin Harvick picked Joe Gibbs Racing driver Chase Briscoe to win at Richmond Raceway. He has shown confidence in Briscoe to claim his second win of the season because of the past success achieved by the #19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team at the 0.75-mile short track.

“I'm going to make a bold prediction. I'm going to go with Chase Briscoe. I just think that they're I look back at you. This is always a great track for Truex [Martin Truex Jr.]. I know that they've kind of it seems like they've kind of figured out how to blend things together. So, it just seems like it might be a good track for them with all the momentum that they have in their past history there,” Harvick said while picking the driver to win the Richmond race [54:51].

Harvick’s co-host, Vincie, picked Briscoe’s teammate Denny Hamlin to score his fifth win of the season.

“I was going to go with Denny Hamlin,” Vincie said.

Meanwhile, co-host Mamba Smith picked Alex Bowman to clinch his first win of the season this weekend. Smith said:

“Hendrick has been really good here. I'm going with Alex Bowman.”

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How has Kevin Harvick’s top pick performed at Richmond?

Kevin Harvick’s pick, Chase Briscoe, has yet to improve his performance at Richmond’s 0.75-mile short track. In eight starts at this track, he has three top-15 finishes with an average finish of 16.7. His best finish is P11, and he has yet to finish inside the top 10.

After 24 races in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, the #19 JGR driver has one win, 10 top-five and 12 top-10 finishes, and led 313 laps with an average finish of 13.3. He’s currently ranked eighth in the Cup Series points table and has had a total of 674 points.

It will be interesting to see how Harvick and his co-hosts' predictions fare at Richmond Raceway. Watch the 2025 Cook Out 400 on USA Network at 7:30 p.m. ET. The Richmond race’s radio coverage will be available on MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.