The Top 5: Breaking down the NASCAR Martinsville weekend (2024)

Five thoughts after NASCAR’s elimination playoff races at Martinsville Speedway…

1. R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The line is so thin, so narrow and so hard to define, it’s essentially the classic “you know it when you see it” description.

We’re talking about respect in racing. Too much disrespect on the racetrack, as seen in the Truck Series race at Martinsville on Saturday, is obvious — drivers run over each other, don’t care about damaging equipment (both their competitors and themselves) and generally appear to have a lack of talent while embarrassing themselves.

Martin Truex Jr. called the type of racing in the Martinsville Truck Series “pathetic.” Denny Hamlin called it “obviously a disaster.” Chase Elliott said he didn’t “know what to call … that,” the final word tinged with disgust.

Then again, if racing is too respectful, nothing much happens on the track and fans complain. Drivers leave themselves plenty of room, let each other go in a gentlemanly manner and don’t appear to be willing to do everything it takes to win. NASCAR has shown it doesn’t want that.

So the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle, but also completely undefined. That’s why you know it when you see it.

In the Xfinity Series race, there was a clear example. Noah Gragson chose the outside for a late restart and defeated Daniel Hemric by racing cleanly for the position — no contact required. Then, coming to the checkered flag, Austin Cindric had a chance to punt Gragson for the victory but instead opted not to bump the leader and raced it out instead.

It was thrilling, edge-of-your-seatracing.What fan wouldn’t want to see that?

But then came the Cup Series race, which seemed to be enough of a mix that it was hard to tell where the line of respect was. No one made a blatant, gross move like Austin Wayne Self wrecking John Hunter Nemechek in the Truck Series race. But Bowman perhaps could have left Hamlin a little more room while racing for the lead, just as Brad Keselowski could have with Elliott earlier in the final stage.

Is that disrespect or just hard racing? Clearly, it depends on your personal view. We’d bet a lot of money, based on his reactions, that Hamlin felt disrespected by Bowman’s actions. At the same time, Bowman said he was racing for a win and just made a slight mistake.

That’s just one example, but the varying interpretations of respect show there’s an increasing disconnect in the garage. The Mark Martin code, carried on by drivers like Jeff Burton, was much easier to understand when someone ran afoul of the standards.

And it’s not generational, either: Young drivers like Cindric chose to race cleanly in Xfinity — following the Truex model — while seemingly the entire Truck Series (veterans included) drove with what Truex called the “iRacing mentality.”

From this corner, it seems the murky definition comes down to two things: a lack of strong leadership in the garage and a lack of enforcement by NASCAR. Hamlin and Kevin Harvick don’t have the same garage clout as, for example, a Tony Stewart type who went out of his way to make sure he taught younger drivers a lesson. Meanwhile, that’s intersected with NASCAR increasingly having a hands-off approach (it didn’t penalize Self even a lap for nearly wrecking the Truck Series title favorite out of the playoffs).

Perhaps it’s time for NASCAR to step in — at least at the Truck level — to start sending a message on what kind of racing is acceptable and what isn’t.

“A few years ago when they said “Drivers, have at it” or whatever, they kind of gave some leniency to the drivers being able to police themselves,” Busch said. “But some of that goes overboard and they’re not making calls on it.”

Even Busch, who regularly preaches clean racing and rails against the lack of respect, said he was considering changing his standards after seeing how others race. He had all but decided to knock Bowman out of the way for the win at Martinsville, which would have advanced him into the final round.

“Seems it’s fair game,” Busch said. “The fans love it. But probably all in who you are on whether or not they like it.”

2. Crowd-pleasers

Deafening boos rained down upon Hamlin when his face was shown on the video board at Martinsville, and it wasn’t just because of ramming Bowman after the race or his “hack” comments about the Hendrick Motorsports driver. Fans have long ago decided they don’t like Hamlin and, no matter what he did on Sunday, there was no reversing it into cheers.

It didn’t matter Hamlin was the one who got spun while leading. Hamlin is Hamlin, so fans were going to respond according to how they already felt about him — not according to his actions Sunday. In fact, they erupted in cheers as soon as he spun out.

That was reminiscent of the overwhelming approval from the crowd after Matt Kenseth wrecked Joey Logano at Martinsville in 2015. How could fans cheer for one of the all-time chicken-s***, unsportsmanlike moves? Because a popular driver wrecked an unpopular one.

In these situations, it’s always fun to play a bit of a role reversal to truly understand what fans’ motivations are. So let’s do that.

Let’s say Kyle Larson was in Hamlin’s position on Sunday and leading the race late with Kyle Busch underneath him. And, like Bowman, let’s say Busch overdrove the corner and made contact with Larson to spin him from the lead.

Whose face would be massively booed when shown on the screen? Busch, of course. He would be at fault and also disliked.

Now let’s switch those up. Let’s say Busch was the one leading the race and Larson, a fan favorite this season, misjudged and took out the No. 18 car.

Who would be booed in that situation? Still Busch! Whether Larson was wrecking someone or was the one who got wrecked, he wouldn’t be booed at Martinsville.

That’s fine if Martinsville fans want to go that route, but at least acknowledge the double standard. After all, other groups of fans around the country judge their cheers and boos based more on an incident than the driver themselves.

For example: In 2006, Dale Earnhardt Jr. spun Carl Edwards and won an Xfinity Series race at Michigan — and was booed for it, not cheered. The fans at the time didn’t approve of how Earnhardt won, even though he was in the midst of his lengthy Most Popular Driver run. So they let him have it. (The YouTuber named The Iceberg did a retrospective video on this incident last year.)

But at Martinsville? For whatever reason, your reputation there is predetermined. And even if a driver is wronged, an active dislike from the fan base is going to result in hearing jeers over cheers.

3. More short tracks

There are three half-mile paved oval races on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule: Two Martinsvilles and one Bristol. But there are 15 intermediate track races on the schedule.

So another thrilling weekend of Martinsville racing got us wondering: What would NASCAR be like if those numbers were flip-flopped? In other words: How would NASCAR look if there were 15 Martinsville/Bristols each year and only three intermediate track races?

“Our ratings would probably double,” Keselowski said.

He might not be wrong. Look at Sunday alone: Keselowski tangled with his old foe Busch — who had recently begun to soften his stance toward Keselowski, only to now wish “I should beat the sh*t out of him.” Hamlin called Bowman a hack and dropped an F-bomb on network television — this after pulling the rare move of interrupting a victory burnout.

In fact, everyone seemed mad at everyone. Imagine if there were another race on a half-mile track next week!

“I just feel like the fans love it the most,” Logano said. “The environment of everyone being close together, the bumping and banging, you don’t have a bad seat in the house, you see the whole racetrack. I know I want to watch a short track race you know; I sat on the couch (Saturday) and watched two races and enjoyed both of them.

“That doesn’t take anything away from mile-and-a-halfs — but if I’m picking one, I’m probably coming to a short track.”

Technically, Richmond Raceway is also a short track at 3/4-mile. But it doesn’t race like one. One-mile ovals Dover, New Hampshire and Phoenix don’t count, either.

That’s why the half-mile venues seem to have the special sauce to creating memorable NASCAR short-track races. But aside from constructing a short track in a football stadium (as NASCAR will do with the L.A. Coliseum next year), logistics seem to be the biggest detriment to turning fantasy into a reality.

As Hamlin noted, NASCAR can’t go to Martinsville 15 times. That would create the same problem as going to too many intermediate tracks.

“We’ve just washed the whole sport down with so much of the same thing,” he said.

Keselowski said it’s difficult for NASCAR to “unwind” itself from intermediates when the past few decades have seen an emphasis on building those giant palaces of speed with the top amenities — while most short tracks around the country lack what would be known as the NASCAR experience.

“At road courses, we seem to be getting amazing attendance with big event feels,” Keselowski said. “But the ratings are less than spectacular, so it’s to me really hard to justify them.

“The short tracks seem to give us the best balance between strong ratings and good crowds and event-type atmospheres, but they’re not perfect either. And then you’ve got the superspeedways that put out the big ratings — but from a car owner standpoint, if we had to do 30 of those a year, we’d all be broke and the sport wouldn’t be economically feasible.”

So as much as it would be nice to keep screaming MORE SHORT TRACKS until someone listens, the reality is there may be a shortage of NASCAR-ready facilities despite short tracks themselves being the most common type of paved track in the country.

But as the case with the quickly increasing number of road courses, perhaps even short tracks could have a point of oversaturation if there were too many.

“Probably everybody would want more intermediates, because typically less is more,” Elliott said. “When we don’t have much of something, we want more of it. And when we have it, we want less. And that’s just going to be the magic answer.”

4. Chase understands

The postrace news conference was 15 minutes old when Elliott was asked about his beloved Atlanta Braves preparing to play Game 5 of the World Series.

“I kind of want to go, to be honest with y’all,” said Elliott, who attended Games 3 and 4 in Atlanta. “I’d love to go home and go down there.”

Sure enough, just over three hours later, Elliott was shown on the video board at Truist Park. The 25-year-old’s joy over seeing his beloved hometown team finally shake off years of heartache to win the National League pennant has been evident in recent weeks.

So we had to wonder: How does the feeling of rooting for a team compare to being the one who is actually competing?

“When you’re involved in something, it’s really hard to step out and see that,” Elliott said Sunday morning. “When you are the competitor versus being the fan, your perception is just so different. Like my mindset is just, ‘This is my job. I know the ins and outs of what I need to focus on today to be successful.’

“I don’t know what the mindset of a baseball player is. We can all act like we do. But are any of us playing? No. So we don’t really know. We might think we know sometimes.”

Elliott said once a person is actually in the middle of competition, it’s difficult to view the broader scope of it. Fans view the game or race a certain way, but the athlete in the arena can’t grasp how it’s being perceived in that moment.

But when he gets to be a fan himself, like with the Braves in the World Series, Elliott suspects that same feeling is shared by No. 9 fans when their driver does well.

“I hope my fans are as passionate about my racing as I am about the Braves right now,” he said. “So if they are — which I’m pretty certain they are — I feel like I’ve got some good ones.”

5. And the champion is…

The website MotorsportsAnalytics.net has a treasure trove of data that might just reveal who has the edge leading into the championship race at Phoenix.

Hamlin, for one, has spent plenty of time scrolling through numbers compiled by the site’s David Smith.

“Last year, I was the 12th-ranked car on 750 (hp) tracks; we were beat before we got there,” Hamlin said of Phoenix. “We just weren’t fast on those tracks. The 550 (hp tracks) were our bread and butter.”

Ultimately, Hamlin said, the Championship 4 finished in order of how they were ranked on short tracks in 2020.

“No surprises,” Hamlin said.

So which driver has the fastest car on the 750 hp tracks this season? Well, that would be Hamlin this time around.

While we won’t post the statistics here since MotorsportsAnalytics.net is a subscription site, we can tell you the No. 11 car is ranked first in median average lap time on short tracks. Larson is ranked third, Truex fourth and Elliott is sixth (Joey Logano, perhaps surprisingly, is second).

Does that mean Hamlin is the title favorite? He won’t be viewed that way by the oddsmakers, but Hamlin has the best average finish of the Championship 4 drivers at Phoenix (10.8) and has won twice.

So you can bet in Hamlin’s mind, he’s the one to beat.

“You look at past track history and you look at who’s been good on the short tracks this year,” Hamlin said. “That’s where it’s gonna come from.”

While he makes a compelling case, I’m personally going to stick with Larson to win the title. This just feels like the Year of Larson in so many ways — even beyond his NASCAR success — and he’ll certainly have a fast enough car at Phoenix to cap off a championship season by getting his 10th win of the year.

(Photo: Wade Payne / Associated Press)