Hamlin, from nearby Chesterfield, led 299 of 400 laps and held off Kurt Busch after a late-race restart for his second victory of the season and the sixth of his Cup career. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver captured the fourth seed in the "Chase for the Sprint Cup" championship, which begins next weekend at New Hampshire.

"Today everything just came together," Hamlin said. "We had good pit stops and didn't make any mistakes, so we just kind of paced ourselves at the beginning."

Hamlin, along with Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, had already clinched a spot in the Chase prior to Richmond, the 26th and final race of the regular season.

While Hamlin captured the victory, his JGR teammate, Kyle Busch, fell just eight points short of Brian Vickers for the final spot in the Chase.

"It's not just tonight or it's not just last week that's kept us out," Busch said. "It's been the past 26 races that unfortunately some days I didn't do my best, and we didn't have the best cars or whatever it might have been."

Kyle Busch finished fifth, but Vickers seventh-place run was good enough to put the Red Bull Racing driver in the Chase for the first time in his career.

"Tonight was a great racetrack, and it was one of best cars I've ever had here tonight, one of our best finishes," Vickers said. "It would have been better if it weren't for that last caution but that's okay."

Matt Kenseth came to Richmond 12th in points, but failed to qualify for the playoffs after dealing with an ill-handling car throughout the race. Kenseth, who won at Daytona and California at the start of the season, finished 25th and missed making the Chase for the first time since the championship format began in 2004.

"Since California, we went to Vegas, and broke in the second lap or first lap and everything has really been downhill since there, so I can't say I'm really surprise that had we didn't make it," Kenseth said. "I'm really disappointed we didn't make it, but we just didn't perform good enough."

Johnson is the only driver who has qualified for the Chase in all six years. The Hendrick Motorsports driver will begin his quest for a record fourth straight Cup championship in the third seed.

Mark Martin locked up his spot with a fourth-place finish. Martin, who is the oldest driver to compete in the Chase at age 50, secured the top seed by virtue of his four victories during the regular season.

"We needed to finish how we ran, and the last two weeks we've done that," Martin said. "So now we go racing. The pressure is off though."

Stewart, in his first year as driver and owner, will start in the second seed.

Kasey Kahne captured the fifth Chase spot, followed by Gordon, Kurt Busch, Vickers, Carl Edwards, Ryan Newman, Juan Pablo Montoya, who also made the Chase for the first time, and Greg Biffle.

"It's weird," Montoya said. "We work all year for this and today we run pretty conservative, pits were pretty slow but we did what we had do to get in. It's kind of weird, because I should be really pumped up and excited and right now I'm just thinking about, we need to run better every week."