5 Points to Ponder: What Kind of Driver Should Be In The Hall of Fame?

1. What Kind of Driver Should Be in the NASCAR Hall of Fame?

The NASCAR Hall of Fame announced its class of 2027 nominees on Sunday (March 29), following a week of much debate surrounding what kind of drivers should be inducted into the Hall.

There’s been an argument that only NASCAR Cup Series drivers should be inducted, ignoring non-Cup drivers entirely.

I’ll join you in this take. @TravisRockhold

— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) March 26, 2026

It’s a bad take. The Hall of Fame has always been a NASCAR Hall of Fame, not a NASCAR Cup Series Hall of Fame. The first batch of 25 nominees in 2010 included Richie Evans, who never made a Cup start.

It’s not fair to argue that no more non-Cup drivers should be in, because there are already plenty of them in the Hall. With that said, I’ve never liked how nominees have to effectively compete and compare themselves to other nominees that bring entirely different resumes to the table.

Just look at the 2027 nominees. How can you really say that Kevin Harvick is a better nominee than Randy Dorton? Or is Dorton a better option than Ray Elder?

The easiest solution to all of this is to separate nominees on different ballots, much like they already do with the Pioneers. I would split them into five:

– Cup Drivers
– Non-Cup Drivers
– Non-Driver Competitors
– Non-Competitors (promoters, media, etc.)
– Pioneer

Each ballot would have five nominees, one inductee per year. Every ballot would have a ten-year time limit except for Pioneer.

A non-competitor ballot seems a bit much, with the Landmark Award covering most of those already. The issue is that there are already four inductees who don’t fit into other categories: Bill France, Bill France Jr., Bruton Smith and Ken Squier.

Those three being in means that there are a number of potential nominees in that category that are simply not. Humpy Wheeler, Chris Economaki, and Tom Higgins are among them. They’ll likely never be nominated under the current system, when they absolutely should be, judging by who is already in.

Jimmy Fennig and Geoffrey Bodine should both at least be nominated. It’s incredibly stupid that, right now, both have to compete with each other to maybe get a nomination. Even though there’s no real point of comparison besides impact on NASCAR, which is incredibly subjective.

And if either gets on the ballot, then Fenning has to be compared to Jack Sprague, or Bodine to Dorton. It doesn’t make sense and turns the induction voting into a popularity contest on the modern era ballot.

This way, there are more inductions every year, but it’s five inductees with almost nothing to do with each other. The Hall wouldn’t run into the issue it was about to in the 2010s of there being too many inductees a year, because each of those categories has plenty of options with one going in each year.

2. Was Martinsville Too Short?

For many years, Martinsville Speedway had two 500-lap Cup races annually.

Then, starting in 2022, the spring race was reduced to 400 laps.

This was an attempt to shorten the race, but it might have worked a little too well on Sunday. With only five cautions on the day, the race was over about 10 minutes under the three-hour mark.

A lot of old-time fans hate this every year and want the race back to 500 laps. Considering it’s me writing this, you might think I’m the same way.

No, it should stay 400 laps. If anything, it might be better to go to 350 laps.

There are a lot of very, very long Cup races. Most motorsport series are not like this at all. It’s really just endurance racing that runs longer than Cup does.

It’s been a big boon for both Formula 1 and the NTT IndyCar Series to have most of their schedule end at about the two-hour mark at most. It also tends to add to the Indianapolis 500’s lure, now that it’s the only consistent 500-mile race that IndyCar has over the years.

Long races every week tend to drag things out for viewership, and this is ultimately a TV sport now. NASCAR should do more things for fans at the track on Sunday, instead of making on-track activities so sacred on that day. Why not run a modified race at noon to warm the crowd up?

If given the option, I would much rather take no stages but shorter races over long races with stages. It would be a much more natural race than what we have now.

3. Was This a Turning Point for Joey Logano?

Joey Logano had a great race at Martinsville, finishing third after having run up near the front for much of the day.

The three-time Cup champion has only won on the paperclip one other time in his career, but he’s been very consistently good there for years now. Sunday marked his 14th straight Martinsville start with a top-10 finish.

It was also exactly what the No. 22 Ford needed after a miserable race at Darlington Raceway the previous race. They were slow all day there and finished three laps down on pure pace.

Time will tell if this was a stepping stone to success for the rest of the regular season or a blip on the map. One big positive Logano has going for him is that he is 12th in the point standings, in spite of just two top-10 finishes this year.

4. It Might Be Time for One Less Visit To Martinsville for NOAPS

From 1995 to 2019, there was only a single NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Martinsville.

That came in 2006, a very muggy standalone race. A mess of an event, it featured 19 cautions for 87 laps in a 250-lap race. It was Darrell Waltrip’s final NASCAR start, and the race was dominated by Harvick after he flew down from Pocono Raceway’s Cup weekend.

The 2026 spring race at Martinsville for NOAPS, one of two there this year, was also a mess. Fourteen cautions for an eye-opening 97 laps. Forty percent of the race was run behind the pace car. It also featured a massive wreck near the end of the race on a restart.

Part of why NOAPS didn’t race at Martinsville all those years was because these cars are typically lighter but with more power than the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series trucks, which ran both Martinsville weekends back then. Add that with younger drivers than the Cup field, and it’s no wonder these races can be a mess.

It might be time for NOAPS to skip this spring weekend here once again. These races usually turn into a mess; this is just the latest example. I’d swap this with the Truck race at Richmond Raceway, a track much more suited for these NOAPS cars that the series just doesn’t run at currently.

5. Will Max Verstappen Cross Over Eventually?

Max Verstappen has not had a very happy season in F1. Enough to where he is now openly discussing retiring at the end of this year, due to the new regulations.

If Verstappen were to leave, I have no doubt at all that he would eventually be back. Almost all the great champions come back eventually; the only real exceptions in 75 years are Jackie Stewart, Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel.

But in his time away from F1, what exactly could he do outside of it? Obviously, his pride and joy is with GT3 racing.

GT3 cars are pretty similar to the current era Cup car.

The second Verstappen steps away from F1, whether now or five years from now, it’s almost a guarantee that Justin Marks will be pushing all of his contacts at Red Bull to try and land him for a Project 91 road course race. Red Bull would support him, as they usually do with their ex-F1 drivers.

And if they don’t, keep in mind Verstappen is currently making a reported $65 million annually. If he wanted to, he could probably just buy a charter at this point by himself. I can’t imagine Verstappen would want to do more than a couple of road course races at most, but that’s just to illustrate how easy it would be for him to come over if he wanted to.

There are only two potential hiccups with the arrangement.

The first would be Red Bull Racing’s heavy partnership with Ford, which may try and block Verstappen from racing in a Chevrolet. Verstappen also races for Mercedes in GT3. The dynamics there would be interesting to watch them navigate.

The second would be the Piquet situation.

To make a very long story short, Daniel Suarez is married to Julia Piquet. Verstappen is in a long-term relationship with Piquet’s sister, Kelly Piquet, and has referenced keeping an eye on Suarez’s performance before because of that connection.

Obviously, that connection could cause a snag in Verstappen’s interest in racing for Trackhouse Racing, given Suarez’s history with that team.

With that said, if these hurdles can be cleared, it would be a massive boon for everybody if Verstappen takes a leap over to stock cars. It would probably be this generation’s answer to when AJ Foyt did the same back in the ’60’s and ’70’s. Let’s just see if he actually pulls the trigger and quits first.