Martinsville Was a Hendrick Celebration

For many of us at Frontstretch, Martinsville Speedway is a favorite.

It’s an old-school place where aerodynamics don’t matter as much and driver skill comes to play.

On Sunday (April 7), there was a celebration of sorts. 40 years ago, Hendrick Motorsports, then known as All-Star Racing, came within a whisker of shutting down due to lack of sponsorship and funding. Then, Geoff Bodine won and the team got Northwestern Bank as a sponsor. The rest is history.

Needless to say, you saw a lot of Hendrick Motorsports coverage this past weekend. Michael Waltrip spent the race over in its hospitality area, which was outside of turn 2, interviewing people associated with the team. Rick Hendrick, who wasn’t in Martinsville due to a recent knee replacement surgery, did a sit-down interview with Chris Myers (additional clips from the interview aired under green during the race). Jeff Gordon narrated a feature on the history of the team.

That doesn’t even include the prodigious coverage of the team during Sunday’s race and all the discussion about the team’s history on the broadcast. In other words, we’re talking overkill here.

In my notes, I only noted that the Hendrick coverage was a bit much around lap 370. It was starting to get to me well before that. Sunday’s broadcast came off like a Hendrick benefit. That kind of stuff drives me nuts.

The fact that the race ended in a Hendrick podium sweep made it all the better for FOX. The only thing that would have made it better for them would have been for Hendrick to be in attendance (he was supposed to drive the pace car prior to the race, but the surgery prohibited him from doing so).

Now, the broadcast wasn’t fully dedicated to HMS. During pre-race, Mike Joy went to what appeared to be a nondescript warehouse in Martinsville. Inside was a treasure trove of artifacts relating to the career of Buddy Arrington, who lived and raced out of Martinsville.

Some of the artifacts, including the Chrysler Imperial, were previously on display at the International Motorsports Hall of Fame outside of Talladega Superspeedway (I could tell since the information card is similar to what they had next to cars there before the museum was renovated). While it doesn’t appear to be open to the public, it was an interesting sight to see.

Also of note, Joy can really make viewers wait for things to pay off. On Saturday, he talked about the first grandfather clock that was awarded at…