Denny Hamlin could perhaps become a NASCAR Cup Series Hall of Famer based on his short track record alone. After earning an impressive sixth grandfather clock at Martinsville Speedway Sunday (March 30), Hamlin now has 15 career Cup wins at ovals less than a mile in length.
When you add in one-mile tracks like Phoenix, Dover and New Hampshire, sometimes considered short tracks in their own right, Hamlin’s win total balloons up to 22. It’s a higher number than Hall of Famers like Bobby Labonte, Benny Parsons and Buddy Baker won in their entire Cup careers. As Hamlin ages, his performance on this track type just keeps improving; his last five victories have come at racetracks a mile or less.
But it’s at Martinsville where Hamlin has been at his best. He’s set career highs in laps led (2,762), top-10 finishes (27) and laps completed there (18,639). Only at Pocono Raceway (seven wins) has Hamlin visited victory lane more in his Cup career.
With Hamlin’s recent run of success here, it’s worth asking the question: has he become the best Martinsville racer of all time?
It’s a good moment to take a closer look as Hamlin’s latest Cup win, his 55th, tied him on the all-time list with Rusty Wallace. Wallace was considered the best Martinsville racer of the 1990s, winning five times in seven starts from 1993-96. His final career win came there in 2004, the cherry on top of a resume that included 3,632 laps led, seven total victories and not one DNF due to a crash.
Hamlin’s numbers, though, are pretty competitive with Rusty along with a cluster of top-tier Hall of Famers.
Most Cup Wins In Martinsville History
| Driver | Starts | Wins | Top 5 | Top 10 | Laps Led |
| Richard Petty | 67 | 15 | 30 | 37 | 2,823 |
| Darrell Waltrip | 52 | 11 | 27 | 31 | 3,617 |
| Jeff Gordon | 47 | 9 | 29 | 38 | 3,779 |
| Jimmie Johnson | 38 | 9 | 19 | 25 | 2,932 |
| Rusty Wallace | 44 | 7 | 17 | 25 | 3,632 |
| Dale Earnhardt | 44 | 6 | 18 | 24 | 1,947 |
| Denny Hamlin | 39 | 6 | 21 | 27 | 2,722 |
| Fred Lorenzen | 17 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 2,731 |
| Cale Yarborough | 31 | 6 | 16 | 19 | 3,766 |
It’s a Who’s Who of the best drivers to ever strap on a NASCAR uniform. And there are some names on the list you might forget about: Jimmie Johnson, for example, quietly racking up nine wins at the paperclip, including six in the playoffs. Jeff Gordon, like Wallace, won his final Cup race at Martinsville (in 2015) and never recorded a single DNF at the track in 47 starts. That’s pretty impeccable.
Then, there’s the name you might not know about: Fred Lorenzen, who with a longer career might be the best on this list hands down. From 1963-64, Lorenzen had a three-win streak for the old Holman-Moody team where he led 1,401 out of a possible 1,500 laps. It’s the type of dominance that would seem impossible to achieve in 2025.
And yet. Hamlin is making his own case in an era where Next Gen parity is rampant. Three times in his last nine starts, he’s led over 200 laps here. His career top-five total trails just Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip and Gordon, all of whom have many more starts at the track.
And while it’s hard to argue six victories holds a candle to Petty’s 15, check out the quality of competition. In each of Hamlin’s wins, at least 15 cars finished on the lead lap. He had to survive overtime in a few of them, the dreaded double-file restart that forced him to hold the lead with a different skill set than commanding a long green-flag run.
Petty, by comparison, never won a race with more than two other cars finishing on the same lap. Some may look at that as pure dominance. Others may point to the mechanical imbalance and unreliability of the era: any competitors who could challenge Petty in those races often failed to finish due to part failure or some other form of poor luck.
That’s not to take anything away from what Petty did. He was the master of a different time. But what Hamlin’s been able to do, contend at this track in multiple types of chassis and playoff formats, has been beyond impressive in this era. And he’s done it without any dropoff late in his career; Petty, by comparison, led a total of three laps the last 12 years he raced at Martinsville.
The closest comparison to Hamlin here is, in my mind, Wallace. He led seven of the last eight races he ran at the track, winning at age 48 and never found himself far from the front. An average start of 7.4 included 11 top-10 qualifying efforts in his final dozen races at Martinsville, many of those racing against drivers half his age.
Wallace, like Hamlin, had a history of being a bridesmaid in an era where Dale Earnhardt at his peak, then Gordon on the rise, outgunned him for championships. He was a short track specialist who had an independent streak, always spoke his mind and was unafraid to use the bumper when needed.
Even with a plethora of bad luck that seemed to surround him, Wallace was still able to eke out one title over Earnhardt (1989). Can Hamlin, at 44, use this win as a springboard to finally earn his?
There’s only one thing we know for sure: this latest performance springboarded him up the list of Martinsville greats. I’d still pick Gordon as the best off this list, edging Wallace and Hamlin, but it’s a close call and Hamlin has at least one more start (if not three to seven more) to bump up his final totals.
Stat Nuggets
- Seven races in and Team Penske has yet to win. But before writing off the three-time defending Cup champs, let’s not forget: no Penske driver visited victory lane last year until Austin Cindric at Gateway (15 races in). With Joey Logano second in laps led to Hamlin (260 for him), I have a sneaking suspicion they’ll be just fine.
- How’s the expansion to three full-time teams affecting RFK Racing? New driver Ryan Preece has led 43 laps and earned the organization’s lone top-three finish this year (third at Las Vegas Motor Speedway). Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher? Neither one has been out front for even a single lap.
- Ty Dillon may have finally found a Cup home at Kaulig Racing. He has as many top-15 finishes in the first seven races (two) than he did during his last full-time Cup season in 2023 driving for Spire Motorsports.
Follow Tom Bowles on X at @NASCARBowles
The author of Did You Notice? (Wednesdays) Tom spends his time overseeing Frontstretch’s 40+ staff members as its majority owner and Editor-in-Chief. Based outside Philadelphia, Bowles is a two-time Emmy winner in NASCAR television and has worked in racing production with FOX, TNT, and ESPN while appearing on-air for SIRIUS XM Radio and FOX Sports 1's former show, the Crowd Goes Wild. He most recently consulted with SRX Racing, helping manage cutting-edge technology and graphics that appeared on their CBS broadcasts during 2021 and 2022.
You can find Tom’s writing here, at CBSSports.com and Athlonsports.com, where he’s been an editorial consultant for the annual racing magazine for 15 years.