Who… should you be talking about after the race?
Denny Hamlin was the class of the field on Sunday (March 30), scoring his first Martinsville victory since 2015. Hamlin led twice for a race-high 274 of the 400 laps around the 0.526-mile short track en route to his first win of the 2025 season.
The driver of the No. 11 Toyota showed poise in the early stages of the race, methodically bidding his time through the opening stint of the 400-lap race, winding up ninth after the first stage. Hamlin then went on to claim the second stage ahead of a hard-charging Chase Elliott and fellow Toyota competitor Bubba Wallace.
As the laps began to wind down, it seemed as though the only obstacle Hamlin was going to face down the stretch was lapped traffic. He masterfully picked off one car at a time to defend the lead down the stretch.
The driver from Chesterfield, Va., notched his 55th career NASCAR Cup Series win Sunday, tying him with NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace for 11th place on NASCAR’s all-time wins list.
On the other hand…
It was an afternoon to forget for defending spring race winner William Byron, who despite qualifying inside the top ten, was a non-factor for much of Sunday’s race, ultimately coming home in the 22nd position.
After a slow pit stop in the early portion of the race, the driver of the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 Chevrolet never seemed to have the pace that his teammates Elliott and Kyle Larson displayed all afternoon.
Being the defending race winner of the spring Martinsville race, Byron was expected to have a car capable of winning, having won twice in the Next Gen car at the Virginia short track.
Nonetheless, a trip to Darlington Raceway next weekend, where the No. 24 team emerged victorious in 2023, should help put a spring back in the steps of Byron and the whole Hendrick organization, which failed to win at one of its historically best racetracks on the NASCAR circuit.
What… does this mean for the points standings?
Byron remains the overall points leader despite an off weekend at Martinsville while his HMS teammate Larson sits only 17 points off of Byron’s lead following a solid fifth-place finish at The Paperclip.
Among the top 10 drivers in points, Tyler Reddick lost ground after Martinsville, giving up four spots in the standings after a 14th-place finish in his No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota dropped him from third to seventh in the standings.
Hamlin’s victory sees the driver of the No. 11 gain six positions from twelfth to sixth, along with clinching a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
The other drivers locked into the playoffs remain unchanged following Martinsville, with Christopher Bell‘s three wins pacing the field, along with Byron, Larson, Hamlin and Josh Berry each picking up one win thus far.
Where… did he come from?
Front Row Motorsports’ Todd Gilliland had himself a quiet, uneventful afternoon and managed to score a top 10 finish, coming home in 10th.
Three-time defending Cup Series champion Joey Logano, who hadn’t finished inside the top 10 for the first six races of 2025, finally broke through, scoring an eighth-place finish, rebounding from a lap 317 spin after contact with Chase Briscoe‘s No. 19 Joe Gibbs racing entry.
Two-time Martinsville winner Ryan Blaney had a dismal effort after qualifying all the way back in 32nd position, but he was able to overcome a lack of track position at the race’s start to finish a respectable 11th on the afternoon.
When… was the moment of truth?
There was no mad sprint to the finish like the 2024 race, but rather a 75-lap green flag run from the race’s final restart to settle the first short track race of the season.
On the race’s final restart on lap 325 of 400, Hamlin was able to inch ahead of his JGR teammate Bell and 23XI Racing’s Wallace to set the pace for the final run to the checkered flag.
From there, the No. 11 picked his way through slower lapped traffic in one of the longest green flag runs of the afternoon, maintaining his gap over Bell and Wallace in the final laps to score his first Martinsville win in 10 years.
Why… should you be paying attention this week?
From one historic venue at The Paperclip to another in The Track Too Tough To Tame, the Cup Series visits the historic Darlington Raceway next weekend for the annual NASCAR throwback weekend.
One of the drivers who will be among the early favorite is Larson, who failed to win last fall’s Southern 500, despite leading a race-high 263 laps, winding up fourth.
Make sure to keep an eye on Byron, who boasts an average finish of 10.3, including a win in the spring race of 2023. Furthermore, Logano should be another favorite at Darlington, having won the first race with the Next Gen car back in 2022.
If you’re looking for an underdog of sorts, look no further than the No. 17 of Chris Buescher who nearly went to victory lane last year before a late race run-in with Reddick. Don’t let an average finish of 15.2 fool you, as Buescher has three top 10s over the last six races at Darlington.
How… did this race stack up?
Looking back to the 2024 spring Martinsville race, the race ended with Byron taking the win in an overtime finish following a late race caution. The finish this time around was more tame, with the final green flag run lasting 75 laps. Hamlin was able to manage his tries as the race stayed clean and green to the finish, finishing a little over four seconds up on teammate Bell.
This year’s finish didn’t provide a mad dash to the finish with an overtime duel like two previous spring races; however, it did show us that when it comes to saving tires and waiting for the right time to pick up the pace, there’s no driver that does that more efficiently than Hamlin.
Additionally, with the new softer tire that Goodyear first implemented for teams in the fall of 2024, teams faced the challenge of trying to maintain track position as passing once again proved to be a difficult task, with only nine lead changes between six different drivers over the course of 400 laps.
Since the introduction of the Next Gen car in NASCAR in 2022, the overall racing product of short tracks has been under scrutiny for sometime now, due to the lack of passing. With Goodyear bringing a new tire these last few trips to Martinsville, it has helped the racing somewhat, but there is still plenty of work to be done to properly restore short track racing back to its glory days in NASCAR’s Cup Series.
