Who … should you be talking about after the race?
It took 17 races, countless laps on iRacing and just the right strategy on Sunday (April 16), but Kyle Larson can now scratch Martinsville Raceway off his “still need to win” list as he passed Joey Logano with just over 20 laps to go to win his first grandfather clock.
A two-tire stop on what would be the day’s final caution gave Larson the best track position he’d had all day. Logano didn’t make it easy; the two went door-to-door for multiple laps before Larson was finally able to get by in a classic short-track battle. From there on, it was smooth sailing as Larson cruised to the checkers.
It’s the 28th win at Martinsville for team owner Rick Hendrick, whose first victory at the track in April 1984 came at the 11th hour as Hendrick planned to shutter his operation as sponsorship failed to materialize — until Geoffrey Bodine put HMS on the map. The win brought new interest in the fledgling team, and Hendrick would go on to build one of the most successful operations in NASCAR.
And don’t forget Chase Briscoe. Overshadowed by the return of another Chase, Chase Elliott, Briscoe scored his second top-five start in a row at Martinsville and turned it into his third consecutive top 10 and first career top five after leading a career-high 109 laps. And had it not been for JJ Yeley‘s lap 343 crash, he might have the clock.
Racing with a broken middle finger (he’ll have surgery Monday morning but wanted to get through this race first), Briscoe, who has quietly run very well at Martinsville recently, didn’t have to rely as much on strategy for track position as he had to race to maintain and improve it.
Briscoe didn’t make a big mistake like teammate Ryan Preece, capitalizing on the speed that all four Stewart-Haas Racing entries displayed…
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