In the 17 years I’ve had the pleasure of writing a column in this special little corner of the motorsports universe, I’ve lost count of the time I’ve written some variation of “there’s nothing that ails NASCAR that a trip to Martinsville Speedway can’t fix” ahead of a weekend visit to the oldest, smallest and slowest track in NASCAR.
This week, I’m not sure I feel quite the same way.
Throughout the decades, Martinsville has been synonymous with stock car excellence — the sort of race you can’t take your eyes off, where every corner, every lap, every pit stop mattered. As the cars, drivers, sponsors — and just about everything else in the world changed — the little old Paperclip, the .526-mile track, the site of NASCAR’s sixth race ever all the way back in 1949 — a race won by Red Byron, taking home a princely $1,500 just for the record — kept on delivering.
Not quite so much in the Next Gen era, sadly, a problem that extends across all of the short tracks. So what can we expect this weekend ahead of the all important final cut off race?
Simple truth is: who the heck knows?
This week will mark the fifth-straight year Martinsville has played host to the penultimate race of the season. On the previous four occasions, the eventual season champion has won the fall race twice: Chase Elliott in 2020 and Ryan Blaney last year. Alex Bowman, who was already eliminated from the playoffs by that point, won in 2021, while Christopher Bell was victorious in 2022 and went on to finish third among the four protagonists the following week at Phoenix Raceway.
But despite the issues with this Next Gen era car at short tracks, what we have seen is a better fall race versus the spring one. Using an albeit unscientific method, The Athletic‘s Jeff Gluck’s Good Race/Bad Race poll, we see the following:
2022:
Spring: 18.7% – William Byron (the fourth-worst result recorded)
Fall: 78.9% – Christopher Bell*
*Note: this was Ross Chastain‘s infamous Hail Melon race
2023:
Spring: 37% – Kyle Larson
Fall: 79.1% – Ryan Blaney
2024
Spring: 31.9% – William Byron
Despite a small sample size, we can reasonably expect a better race the second time around in 2024, not least with six drivers vying for those all important two final title berths.
One huge factor might just be the new Goodyear left-side tire compound.
“The option tire that we ran at both North Wilkesboro [Speedway] and Richmond [Raceway] has been designed to give the Cup cars more grip early in a run and have lap times falloff more later,” Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing, noted in a release from NASCAR this week. “We come to Martinsville with that same right-side tread compound as part of the setup teams will run, along with a left-side tire that utilizes the softest tread compound in our tire lineup.
“Martinsville is a tricky track for many reasons – not only the time of year we race there, but also the layout with the tight, concrete corners. We had a good test there in August and came out of it with this setup, which is another step forward on our short track package.”
Now, I’m no meteorologist, but I do wonder what the difference is between a low-60s cloudy day with a full field in November vs. an August test with a handful of cars.
Weather concerns aside, those are at least a couple of data points to suggest that we might be in for a good one this weekend. Worth noting, too, that of the six drivers looking to transfer, all have won there previously. Denny Hamlin leads the way with five wins, Byron has two victories while Elliott, Larson, Bell and Blaney each have one grandfather clock trophy.
But given past experiences at Martinsville in key playoff races it’s perhaps hard not to expect Hamlin to be right in the middle of it. You have Chastain’s 2022 move that eliminated him in the final corner in 2022, plus this with Elliott in 2017 and this with Bowman in 2021.
Hamlin, it’s worth noting, is 18 points shy of the cut line, a number that would have been significantly reduced were it not for the L2 engine penalty (10 playoff points) and the 75 regular season points that saw him plummet down the standings. And although it’s not technically a must-win, it sure does feel that way for the Joe Gibbs Racing veteran.
While he’s the most successful active driver at Martinsville, it’s been a long while since he picked up a grandfather clock. He won in 2008, 2009 and swept both races in 2010 and 2015. You could certainly argue he’s long overdue.
I have no idea what to expect this weekend, but I’m cautiously optimistic. But I can only hope after an absolute barnburner of a race at Homestead-Miami Speedway last weekend, we see another instant classic to set us up for one final run for the 2024 title at Phoenix.
Danny starts his 12th year with Frontstretch in 2018, writing the Tuesday signature column 5 Points To Ponder. An English transplant living in San Francisco, by way of New York City, he’s had an award-winning marketing career with some of the biggest companies sponsoring sports. Working with racers all over the country, his freelance writing has even reached outside the world of racing to include movie screenplays.