NASCAR 101: Martinsville Is Relic of NASCAR’s Past, Icon of Its Present

Icons tend to come and go.

The rise and fall of nations, dynasties and leaders have conditioned us to pick and choose what we label as iconic on a relatively temporary basis. For the most part, the icons of 75 years ago are not thought of as such today.

One of the rare exceptions to this rule is nestled in Southern Virginia, sitting roughly five hours south of the United States capital.

Martinsville Speedway sits in the town of Ridgeway, Va., population 737. Twice a year, the relative quiet of Henry County is disturbed by the roar of engines that has persisted at Martinsville since 1948.

As historic as Daytona International Speedway, Darlington Raceway and Charlotte Motor Speedway are to NASCAR fans, Martinsville is the magnum opus of NASCAR history. The track was built in 1947, and when the NASCAR Modified Division held its first season of competition in 1948, the then-dirt surface of Martinsville was on the schedule.

A year later, the Strictly Stock Series — now the NASCAR Cup Series — enlisted the services of H. Clay Earles’ half-mile venue on Sept. 25, 1949. Driving his No. 22 Oldsmobile, Red Byron led 97 of 200 laps en route to the second of his two victories in what would turn out to be a championship season.

Nearly 76 years after the Cup Series first made the trek to Martinsville, the Paperclip remains a staple of the NASCAR Cup Series calendar.

Aside from being paved in 1955, the track has seen relatively few changes. The physical, close-quarters racing fans will watch this weekend is the same style seen at Martinsville in the 1950s and in every decade since. Martinsville is a track that will undoubtedly test a driver’s temper. And should the driver fail that test, their schoolyard fist-fighting skills will likely be tested on pit road after the race.

The racing product at Martinsville has stood the test of time, but another important aspect of the facility has as well. The Martinsville hot dog stand rests in the infield, and according to track president Clay Campbell, the cinderblock building is the original.

The Martinsville hot dog isn’t your run-of-the-mill concession stand item, however. It’s a rite of passage for any first-time visitor to the facility, and a frankfurter-shaped stairway to hot dog heaven for others.

How deep does the Martinsville hot dog run in the speedway’s lore? Just ask the pit crews present at the track in October 2004, when in the middle of the first Cup playoffs, teams couldn’t have cared less about how fast their cars were in the midst of a championship battle. The hot dogs had been changed — a product of ISC buying the track from the Earles family — and the crews weren’t happy about it. Gone were the wax papers that once held the most famous hot dogs in NASCAR. Gone was the lack of responsibility for those purchasing the treat as well: If you bought a hot dog, you had to dress it yourself.

The uproar from the hot dog scandal was so severe that crew members made their displeasure known by marching into the NASCAR hauler, a tradition usually reserved for crews and drivers after they made a rash decision on the track.

Below the surface, the hot dog uproar of 2004 was an indication of how much Martinsville, and all of its intricate components, mean to all who come to know it.

Martinsville is not the only track on the NASCAR circuit that can make fans feel as if they’re stepping into a time machine. Darlington and North Wilkesboro Speedway are both excellent examples of tracks that advertise the illustrious history of NASCAR as much as they do the racing presently going on at the facility. But Martinsville remains a time capsule in its own special way.

The train tracks and forests that surround the half-mile haven of speed give way to a track that has literally seen it all. From Byron to Ryan Blaney, Martinsville’s walls hide a treasure trove of stories beneath a layer of relish.

Few sporting venues successfully bridge the gap between the past and the present. Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Darlington and North Wilkesboro are examples of facilities that have, as is Martinsville. The likes of Lee Petty, Darrell Waltrip and Ricky Rudd don’t grace its asphalt anymore, but their stories live on through those who now go to war at Martinsville twice a year.

Martinsville has a unique opportunity to be a relic of the past, an icon of the present and a guiding light for the future. Even storied venues such as Darlington and North Wilkesboro haven’t been immune to the ebbs and flows of professional sports. There was once a time when North Wilkesboro lay dormant and rumors of Darlington’s future swirled around the garage like a cold Virginia wind. Yet Martinsville remained staunch, entrenched on the NASCAR schedule despite a hot dog disaster. Through NASCAR’s early years as a strictly Southern sport, the boom in popularity in the 1990s and the sport’s eventual decline in popularity in the late 2000s, Martinsville was still there, waiting for tens of thousands of diehard fans to pack its grandstands and be both taken back to the past and intrigued by the present.

It’s that same sentiment that will lure those same thousands to file into NASCAR’s oldest track and millions more to tune in on television. Martinsville isn’t exactly what it used to be, but it’s not a foreign entity, either. It’s a track that, while certainly affected by NASCAR’s Next Gen car and the overall modernity of the sport, is still capable of pulling an unforgettable moment or two out of its hat if it sees fit.

If the walls of Martinsville could talk, they’d tell incredible stories — but they’d do so while dipping their pen back into the inkwell and preparing to write some more.